


Torturous Love

by SashaDistan



Series: The Best Circle of Hell [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Blood As Lube, Blood and Gore, Demons, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Empath, Enemies to Lovers, Kidnapping, M/M, Mind Manipulation, Suicide Attempt, Torture, they fall in love at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-01-03 05:33:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 41,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21174242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SashaDistan/pseuds/SashaDistan
Summary: Having spent the day hard at work, Tobias is keen to practice his baking skills and go home for a good nights rest. But there is a demon waiting in the woodland with other things on his mind. The discovery of a shared talent sends their futures in a rather different direction than either of them could have predicted.





	1. TL: Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: Blood, gore, rape, torture - on screen and in detail. Viewer discretion is advised. Obviously only suitable for over 18s.

The Inn had been rammed all evening, and patrons who had been eager to order at the bar every opportunity they got had tempered their drunkenness with frequent calls for more and more food. Tobias had been run off his feet for hours moving between the ovens and the fire pit, calling for more plates and platters, cursing the staff behind the bar for their lack of ability to clear tables in anything like a timely manner, and growling under his breath between orders that the head cook hadn’t turned up for the evening. He should have known better, because Tobias was well aware the head cook suffered with a monthly affliction which manifested as being incredibly hungover right after they got handed their wages. It was a good thing Tobias had been arriving early, staying late, and learning everything he could about food from the Inn’s elderly owner.

The last of the rowdy, drunken crowd had been kicked out a half hour previously, and Tobias had cleared and cleaned the kitchen with the help of an apprentice whose name he hadn’t had time to learn. Now he stood by the counter, whipping egg whites with a reed whisk and adding sugar with the other hand. It had taken him half the week to get set up to make Forgotten Cookies; grinding the hard cone of sugar – not great quality but the best he could afford – in between shifts, hand sewing a clean canvas piping bag, and getting his friend – who was apprentice to the smith – to cut and press him a star shaped nozzle from a piece of scrap sheet metal. Tobias finished his mixture and began to follow the instructions the owner had written down for him. Her letters were clear and strong, but Tobias had to trace the shapes with one finger, trying out the letters as he half-read, half-remembered what to do. Eventually the young man stowed the tray of star shaped, white sweets in the oven where the fire had burnt down to nothing but embers at the back, shut the door and sealed it with a rope of new clay, like he did when they baked bread in the mornings, and shut up the kitchen looking forward to the sweets he would be able to sneak in to fetch before church the next morning.

“You’re still here?” Tobias stopped in shock at the barman’s words, spoken from the half dark of dying fire and the low candles. “I thought I was the only one left.”

“Me too.” Tobias glanced at his feet, unable to hold the barman’s dark gaze. “I was… baking.”

“I don’t understand all this new-fangled food stuff you do. Just give me a hunk of bread and a charred steak. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.”

“N-n-no. Of course not!” Tobias cursed himself for stuttering, again. He only did it in front of Richard Fletcher, and he knew that if the burly man had any idea what was going on in Tobias’s head, there would be no more baking, and probably no more living, in the little town he called home.

_It’s not like it’s going to ever happen anyway, _his mind told him. _You know exactly what he thinks about. And she’s got long hair and a bodice laced up way too tight._

Tobias smiled nervously, made some half hearted attempt at a goodnight, and saw himself out into the night thick with stars. He hadn’t needed to be in the main room of the Inn to know that Richard Fletcher was lusting over Prudence, a girl who had been rather seriously misnamed for she could stick her nose into other people’s business like no one Tobias had ever met. That information had wandered into his head without his permission the first time Richard had ever been in the kitchen, his mind clearly not on the message he was passing on. Tobias had nearly choked on his ale – it had been a while since anyone in his immediate vicinity had broadcast their thoughts so clearly – but it hadn’t been a total surprise.

Tobias sighed as he walked, taking the well worn cart track which lead out of town and through the coppiced woodland to the farm where his father and two brothers had spent the day hard at work in tree and field. His little sister, he was sure, would wake early to sit with him and regale him with the goings-on of the day, and show him the progress she had made on her needlework. Tobias wished he’d been able to stay in school long enough to learn his letters well enough to be able to teach them to his little sister, but at least she could write her own name in a carefully practised manner. His sister had a wonderfully flavoured mind, each one of her thoughts darting like little silver fish across his inner vision, and the feelings conjured when she spoke always made him smile with their clarity and purity. Tobias knew, in abstract, that one day she would no longer be so little, or so innocent, but he hoped that future was a long way off.

As he entered under the tunnel of oak branches, fallen acorns crunching underfoot, he thought of the Forgotten Cookies sat baking gently in the cooling oven back at the Inn, and hoped that no one else disturbed the kitchen first thing in the morning. There shouldn’t be anyone to bother him if he got there early enough. The Inn baked all its own bread, and the head cook should have recovered from his self induced illness by the morning to get up and get the dough Tobias had already made, shaped and in the oven so as to be ready and cool for the afternoon.

Thinking about the bread turned Tobias’s mind back to the previous summer, when a well to do nobleman and his staff had been required to stop in their town by emergency repairs needed on one of their carriages. In the middle of the day, the Inn didn’t have as many staff, and Tobias had delivered the food, then gone back out to clear up. A short while later, the nobleman’s chief of staff had appeared in the kitchen, and Tobias’s heart had leapt up into his throat and directed all his blood to either end of his torso when the suave, polite, courteous, gorgeous man had begun to praise his evident skills as a cook. Tobias had always wanted to go and work somewhere where food was more than something to mop up beer with. When the offer came, nothing made him hesitate, right up until the moment when he stood near the nobleman himself, and shivered with the feelings that eked from the richly dressed figure. Tobias knew he could not work for a man like that, for someone who viewed people as his property and valued the prowess of his stallion far more than the happiness of his own wife who had failed to bear him a son. Shaking, Tobias had turned down the chance to grow his skills, and run home in tears of mixed relief and anguish. Never again had he created the fancy braided loaves he made for the nobleman. His sister had taught him to braid, and he hated to think of that sweet skill sullied by its association in his mind with such a terrible man.

Tobias shivered. He was nearly home, but it was cold, the night air chill now that autumn was approaching fast, and the moon through the trees cast weird shadows over the ground. When he’d first started at the Inn, his father had worried, and sent one of his brothers to walk home with him, but invariably they had shown up early and flirted with the girls, and Tobias had pretty much always ended up walking alone anyway. He was rounding the last bend in the path when he heard a voice on the breeze: a soft, clear tenor, a bard’s voice surely, singing to a tune that arrived in his mind without instrumental accompaniment.

“_Never yet have I known one,_

_Lovelier on earth._

_Blow, Northern wind!_

_Send me my sweetling,_

_Blow Northern wind! Blow… Blow...”_

Tobias reached out for the flavour of the mind which had sung so sweetly, and recoiled sharply at the darkness which had… reached back. The voice in his head, usually so snarky and confident, told him to run, but his curiosity was stronger. Tobias took another three steps, and saw the figure which leant against the thick trunk of an oak older than the town which Tobias’s called home. He saw the cloak wrapped around the narrow frame, saw the moonlight shine brightly off something which glittered in the figure’s hands, saw the relaxed, casual way the person stood, as though it was perfectly normal to be abroad in the woods in the darkness. But his mind saw differently: there was darkness, another presence like himself, looking back at him and observing the flavour of his own self. In the darkness there was desire, hot and twisted like a piece of metal in the forge, and Tobias suddenly realised he should have believed their pastor when the man had tried to impart upon them as children the knowledge that demons walked the land.

Tobias froze, and the figure moved. The moment the young man saw the demon’s eyes, he knew, deep down in the pit of himself where he whispered his most secret thoughts, that already, it was too late. His fate had been sealed by those unnatural yellow eyes, their vertical pupils locked on his own, and when the demon smiled, the moonlight had nothing to do with how bright or sharp its teeth were.

“Blow, Northern Wind,” the demon intoned without melody, “and bring me my sweetling.”

The full horror of what Tobias was seeing hit him like a slap around the face, but he didn’t waste time screaming: he’d been taught better than that. He turned and ran, moving as quickly as he could, his mind already racing away with the possibility of where he could hide. He’d been playing in these woods his whole life, he knew the terrain like the back of his hand, but in the space of five breathes he’d felt the dark mind brush against him again.

_There’s no escaping this. You’ve heard the pastor’s sermons. Once you’ve let the devil in…_

_No! _Though Tobias fiercely to himself, reaching out to push a soft branch out of his way as he left the path. _I will not!_

And then there was pain.

The demon had laid a hand on his shoulder, claws like knives digging through wool and suede, and slicing deep into his flesh. Tobias bit back a yell, but demon’s hand tightened, and Tobias’s stomach lurched as claws scraped against bone. He tried to pull away, but he was caught fast, and in one swift bout of pain, the demon span him round to look in his eyes.

Tobias felt, more clearly than he’d ever sensed another’s emotion, the images crisper than any he’d yet seen, the hunger and desire of the yellow eyed demon. He knew, suddenly, what the demon wanted to do to him, taking his most private imaginings and twisting them about until Tobias barely recognised the inside of his own mind. The demon smiled at him, claws carving the muscle of his shoulder, and Tobias screamed.

“Oh sweetling, you make such lovely music for me.”

“Please. Don’t. Let me go.”

“Not tonight, dear one.”

Tobias’s eyes widened as the full horror of what the demon was about to do to him sunk in. He was pulled to the ground, twigs and stones digging into his back, he could feel his blood running over his skin and seeping into his clothes. His shoulder was on fire, his hand was going numb, but as the demon hovered over him, Tobias clenched his jaw, kicked out at the thing which had hurt him, turned and scrambled for purchase in the leafy undergrowth. He’d barely made it half a length before pain blossomed up his leg. His ankle was in tatters, the bone wrenched from it’s socket as the demon pulled him back and flipped him over with a snarl.

“I knew you were a fighter. I love being right.” The demon’s voice was rich and deep and rumbled in his chest. Tobias wanted to shut out the flood of warmth in his belly, because a voice like that made his knees weak despite himself. “I’m going to have fun enjoying you.”

The demon swarmed up him and gripped his jaw with a firm hand. His claws drew blood on Tobias’s cheek, but he brushed the red beads with a soft ash-grey furred finger, and Tobias watched with mounting horror as the demon licked his blood. The demon smiled, a twisted gesture on such a feral face, and kissed him.

_Of all the first kisses I thought I might have, this was not what I imagined._

_Sweetling,_ the demon’s voice, soft and warm, arrived in his head without bypassing his ears,_ reality is always better than imagination._

Tobias realised the demon’s long tongue was in his mouth, lips on his own, and he bit him. A moment later he realised his mistake, because the demon had fangs like a mountain lion, and he bit back.

“Don’t test me, boy,” the demon snarled. He gripped Tobias’s jaw so hard that the young man screwed shut his eyes it an attempt to block the pain which spread through him, and then he felt the demon’s hot breath on his ear as the rough tongue dragged over his ruined skin.

The strangest sensation followed, like the prickling one felt in a limb that was too slow to wake, and Tobias saw the vision of himself through the demon’s yellow eyes as his torn lip began to heal. It was like a miracle, but only angels and saints could perform miracles…

“And I ain’t either of those.” The demon finished for him. “That’s better, beauty restored.”

“W-w-what? W-w-why?”

“Shhh...” The demon rubbed a soft-furred thumb over his lips. “Don’t ask so many questions.”

_It can’t hurt to ask._

“Let me go?”

The demon grinned, and slashed his leg open from hip to knee. Tobias screamed.

_I was wrong._

His clothes were in tatters, and the demon ripped the rest away without any care whatsoever, his sharp claws pricking and scratching his skin as he was laid bare. Tobias knew he couldn’t get away, but when the demon wrapped a hand around his privates he wriggled uselessly, his dislocated foot making him want to scream. The demon fondled him gently, the expression in his eyes almost kind, and then he smiled evilly, dipped his fingers in the blood which pooled in the deep wound in Tobias’s thigh, and pushed his himself into the young man’s intimate opening.

“NO!”

“My, my, how… new.”

The demon’s fingers moved within him, unyielding, and Tobias was distracted from the pain of his wounds by the hot ball of shame that clogged his throat as he was touched. He could barely believe what was happening, and tried to think of anything other than all the thousands of undesired moments when he’d been privy to the images of sex in other people’s lives. But they played out like a reel, every salacious drooling look, every stray hand up a skirt, every pair of lips wrapped around another’s stiffened girth, every moment when the only images being shown to him were of men fucking their wives, or their neighbours wives, or daughters, or sons. Every sinful secret in the town weighed upon him as the demon touched him. Tobias looked into the face of the monster, and realised that now he was seeing all those things too.

“Poor little Tobias. Watching everyone else having fun, not getting any himself.” The demon frowned softly. “No, that’s not it, is it?”

_It makes you scared, wanting something which is a sin. Oh sweetling._

_NO! _Tobias squirmed as the demon moved inside him, wanting to be rid of the feeling of the beast in his body and in his mind. _Please, just kill me._

“Please!” he begged, his voice hoarse, “please kill me.”

“No. You’re too much fun alive.”

The demon pulled his hand away, and Tobias wanted to cry with thanks, but a moment later the demon was holding his palm between his own, rubbing one thumb in small circles, pressing gently on the bones underneath the skin.

_The last thing I did was make Forgotten Cookies with that hand. _It was a weird thought to have, watching himself through his memory, whisking the eggs whites and piping the little stars of sweet delight. He could feel the darkness in his mind, and then he knew what the demon was going to do.

“NO! No no no no. Please. I beg you, don’t...”

But the demon grinned evilly, pressed hard, and Tobias screamed in pain as the bones in his hand snapped like twigs. The pain was too much, he couldn’t hold onto it, he knew it would overwhelm him. He hoped death would come quickly. Tobias blinked, then again very slowly, and then he could bear it no longer, and passed out.

He opened his eyes to find the moon had moved a hands breadth in the sky. For the smallest heartbeat, Tobias thought he was alone in the dark woods, with his blood staining the leaves and rough ground, but then he felt the warm physical presence of the demon, and he knew there was no escaping this damnation.

_This is what I get for not liking church._

“Hahahaha!” The demon’s laugh was, like his voice, rich, deep, and powerful. Why a creature of darkness had been given such a musical voice Tobias couldn’t begin to guess. The beast was using one hand to draw whorls and patterns over his abdomen in blood and some shiny, sticky substance he didn’t immediately recognise. Then his eyes adjusted to the dark, and he realised the demon was just as naked as he was. Noticing his observation, the demon smirked. “You feel everything so strongly. I couldn’t help myself. I expect your body will be even more delightful.”

“No!”

The horror of the demon’s suggestion made Tobias suddenly strong. He forgot his wounds, feeling had returned to his unbroken hand, and he tried to push the monster away. His hand gripped a short, pointed horn, like that of a goat, but his attempt to throw the creature from him was halted, because the demon took his other palm, and ground the broken bones together with his fingers.

“AHHHHH!”

“Oh sweet glory….” the demon hissed between his fangs.

Under the pain, Tobias felt something else, and his mind grasped for it before he’d even thought about what such an action might mean. A thick rope of pleasure, rich and sweet like new honey straight from the hive, oozed across him, and suddenly he was panting and flushed, unable to control the feelings which surfaced through the sticky ribbon of bliss. He gripped the demon’s horn, and pulled the monster down to his mouth once more. The beast kissed him like a man who was drowning, groaned against him, and flayed the skin of his chest with one sharp hand. Tobias couldn’t scream, but the pain walloped him around the skull and he shook with tension. Then the flood of pleasure was deeper, stronger, and Tobias saw it in his mind’s eye, how all the pain he was feeling delighted the creature atop him, and how that pleasure flowed back through into Tobias as well. He wanted to pull away, tried to pull away, the horror of what he understood making him wish he could claw out his own eyes, but he was trapped by the weight and strength of the beast.

_We couldn’t do that,_ the demon’s voice in his head was such a sweet counterpoint to the dark pleasure he was feeling that Tobias heard himself whimper, _You have such pretty eyes._

“W-why are you doing this to me?”

The demon smiled at him, all sharp teeth and bright, sun-yellow eyes.

“Because it feels _so_ good.” He stressed his words by pressing his claws into Tobias’s newest chest wound, making the young man cough and whine in pain. A dart of the demon’s pleasure spiked in his mind, and Tobias wished he couldn’t feel how much pleasure the pain was giving the beast.

Then he blinked, and the monster was turning him over, dead leaves and mud getting into his wounds-

_At least you’re not going to survive long enough to get flesh-rot,_ his hind brain said.

-and Tobias felt the chill breeze blow across skin he’d hoped the demon had forgotten about. He shivered violently, and tried to pull away, but a hand one on thigh held him fast.

“Don’t!”

“I do so love new flesh,” the demon purred. “There is something special about being the first.”

Tobias had been far too young to know what the feelings other people had broadcasted had meant when images had started arriving with some of them, and though he’d known what mating was – because no child grew up on a farm not knowing – he’d been much too young to be shown such intimate and sometimes disturbing views of what people did to each other without their clothes on. And whilst he might have enjoyed watching Richard Fletcher pour drinks with his broad, bare arms, or dreamt about the farrier’s lad who came out to visit the cart horses with his hammers and rasps and curly blond locks, he’d never wanted to be like all those sweaty, rough, immoral people who had unwittingly shown him things he had been too young to learn about. He hadn’t wanted them before that night, and he didn’t want them now. But the demon wanted them, and Tobias couldn’t stop him.

“Please don’t.” He squeezed shut his eyes, hoping the creature might kill him before it defiled his body further. “I beg you.”

“The night is young.” The demon’s hands parted his flesh, literally and intimately, as he spoke, and Tobias wailed with fresh pain once again. “And you’re so beautiful.”

Tobias cried when the demon entered him, his pain and misery blanketed by the growing delight of the demon, each sensation feeding the other until Tobias’s mind could bear it no more. He roamed over his own body, no one sensation holding him as he examined the pain which radiated from his many wounds; the amount of dark blood spilled over the ground; the way his broken hand was dark in the centre, lumpy and wrong; the jarring of his foot and ankle, in time with the hard, ruthless pounding of the demon’s stiff member inside his body. The beast thrust into him, a beam of pure, unbridled enjoyment lancing from him directly into Tobias’s mind, and the young man wept, because he knew it would never be over. There was a fullness inside his body which he hadn’t ever known could be there, and another mess of shame as he realised that his own blood was making his passage slippery for the demon’s thrusts. Tobias wished fervently for the stillness death would bring, the freedom from all he felt, but there was the darkness of the demon inside his head, and Tobias knew that death was not going to be kind.

_Kindness does not bring us to such dizzying heights._

Tobias had no answer for the beast. His mind was wrapped up in feeling every sensation his body had to offer: the pain; the itchiness of scabs trying to form over wounds still being shaken open by the demon’s fucking; the heat building within him, like he was a furnace being banked; the way the muscles of his entrance tried to grip weakly and hold the demon’s hardness, or keep it out, but could do neither.

The demon raked claws across his back, then bent to lapping him almost as quickly, sealing the skin once more. Again and again he spilt the young man’s blood, until Tobias was shaking in a manner that had nothing to do with how cold he was. He had to try and get away.

The snap of a rib bone sounded like the smack of the smith’s hammer on his anvil, and Tobias screamed, then coughed. He tried to balance on his hands, his arms, but he couldn’t. He slipped to the ground, his body trying to turn itself inside out through his mouth, and then the demon’s furred, clawed hand closed around his throat as the hard member within him swelled. Tobias knew what was coming, he’d seen and felt it in other people’s heads so many times before, and the demon lost his self control along with his seed, and squeezed the young man’s throat.

Tobias felt the nothingness racing up to meet him, finally, and he gave thanks without words that death was coming to claim him at last. Even the hot spurt of his own pleasure could not break through the smother of his shame at the sin he had allowed to be committed with his body, and Tobias sank gratefully into oblivion.


	2. TL: Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tobias doesn't die, despite his best intentions.

The demon felt it when his prey lost consciousness, the minute resistance of his body faded, and the pain, humiliation, and fear which had fed his pleasure vanished so abruptly that Zai snarled fruitlessly into the chill night air. He rolled the young man over, and stroked a hand over his torso appreciatively, his claws catching on the edges of already torn skin. There was the boy’s heartbeat, faint and soft… and receding under his touch. Frantically, the grey furred demon took Tobias’s face in his hands, cradling his jaw, watching the blood run from his neck.

“No! Nononono! You’re not dying on me now.” But he couldn’t waste any more time on talking, and as quick as his natural abilities would allow, Zai set about with his tongue to heal the young man who’d brought him such dazzling ecstasy.

His blood was sweet and complex, and Zai couldn’t place the flavour, though it was hauntingly familiar. Once the wounds in his neck were closed, the new skin slightly shiny and pinker than the surrounding paleness, Zai turned his attention to the rest of the boy. Once his chest was healed, Tobias’s heartbeat was stronger and more regular, so Zai set about the long job of fixing the bones in his hands and the pulled and twisted ligaments in his ankle. Inch by inch, he licked his way over his prey, healing everything including the stretched and sensitive muscles of his sphincter, and removed the rest of Tobias’s tattered and useless clothing. Then Zai sat back on his heels to look at the boy he’d tortured.

Passed out in the moonlight, Tobias seemed young. He was not a child, but not a man with shoulders hardened and bent by long hours of heavy work, and for a moment Zai wondered if he’d chosen wrongly. There were demons in hell who liked their prey with the innocence that only childhood could grant, but Zai had always much preferred other proclivities.

_How could it be wrong?_ He told himself silently. _He is like you, an empath. A very rare treat indeed._

Zai stroked the young man’s cheek gently, then his dark brown hair, which looked like it had been cut with a bread knife by someone with only the very faintest clue what they were doing, and caught himself wondering what Tobias would look like if he smiled.

_Keep wishing…_

The demon dressed himself slowly, only taking his eyes from the boy to buckle his belt and boots, combed his hair with his fingers, shrugged into his jacket and smoothed the fabric over himself before reaching for his great cloak. His fingers paused at the texture of something in his pocket, and Zai drew the length of thin, bright silver chain from his pocket. He stared at it thoughtfully.

_You were playing with the Chain of Possession when you first saw him. _

_Indeed._

_Maybe it means something?_ His inner voice suggested.

_I hate symbolism._

_But the Prince loves his riddles. Maybe there was a reason it turned up in your room._

Zai stared at the pale, lithe, beautiful body of the young man he’d nearly killed.

_Maybe that’s the reason._

The demon bent, and looped the Chain around the boy’s throat. The links were so fine that they moved like liquid, and the short length of flowing metal became the exact right length to lie comfortably over the boy’s clavicle, and bonded with itself the moment Zai let it go. He felt the thread of power running from him as he stood – the sense of the young man’s nearness – and Zai knew he could pull on that thread very hard if he wanted to. The night air was cold, but in the far East, the sky was already lightening from deepest indigo to soft blue – too little a distinction for human eyes – but Zai knew the dawn would be upon them all to soon. He wrapped his great cloak around the body of his prisoner and hefted him into his arms.

Zai did not much fancy the idea of laying to waste an entire sleeping town, such actions brought the kind of swift and painful retribution he himself was usually employed to give out, and so he took the boy in the direction in which he’d been travelling when Zai had interrupted him. Zai cast out his empathic senses, feeling for the soft lights of mortal lives in the farmlands beyond the woods, felt a house packed tight with people, each of them dreaming to themselves, then turned North into the wind and felt a single soul, soft in the way that Zai had learnt meant old, sleeping fitfully. He headed that way.

The farmhouse was slightly more than a shack, but less than a cabin, nestled in between ancient trees, and adjoined by a series of ramshackle pens and shelters which held a cowering selection of livestock. All animals vanished as much as they could when a demon walked upon the land, and even though these creatures couldn’t leave, they knew better than to announce his presence. Zai pushed open the door of the little house to find a single room, complete with bed, a table with two mismatched handmade chairs, a fireplace in dire need of cleaning out but bearing a black grate and a heavy metal griddle, and a rough stone sink with a bucket. In the bed, wrapped in a threadbare sheet, was an old man.

Zai snarled to himself, and placed his prey down gently on the table. The movement was enough to stir him, a half mumbled word that meant nothing and a soft groan, and then he slept on. The old man roused fitfully, but Zai didn’t give him a chance to speak. The demon crossed the little house in four long strides, and snapped the humans neck without pausing. He threw the body over his shoulder, the weight meaningless against his natural strength, and strode from the house. At the far end of the mess of animal pens was a neglected looking vegetable garden, and a large, stinking muck heap. Zai tossed the corpse onto it and sneered: demon he might be, but never would he, or any of the others he lived with, allow their residence to become so soiled. Back in the house, he wiped his boots on the already filthy mat before taking them off, and went to the tall cupboard by the bed where he was surprised to find a stack of thick blankets which looked as if they had never been used.

_Saving things for best,_ Zai sighed to himself, and spread several blankets out over the mattress. _Kiorl does that, though he doesn’t think anyone knows. _Zai wondered what the major demon of his household would say if he brought his prey home.

_Home? So now you’re keeping him?_

_He’s wearing the Chain. I can’t just leave him here._ Zai frowned as he realised that he hadn’t thought his actions through.

_Maybe you should have had a plan before you made sure he didn’t die._

Zai hissed at himself and moved to pick up the boy once more. He laid him on the bed, draped another blanket around his narrow frame, then tucked himself in behind the young man and dragged the last blanket up over his head. It would be dawn soon, and Zai didn’t want to risk his eyes. In the musty darkness under the wool he ran his free hand over Tobias’s body, pausing on the high point of is hip bone, and then moved to feel his heart.

The wind rattled the window-glass against its frame, and Zai smiled.

“Blow, Northern wind, and bring me my sweetling...”

The demon tucked his horned head down behind the young man’s neck, curled his long, tuft-ended tail around his own thigh, yawned briefly, and closed his yellow eyes to sleep.

*

There was birdsong. It was so natural, normal, innocent, that at first Tobias just dragged the blanket over his head and rolled over, hoping he could just go back to sleep for a little while before his sister or his brothers came looking for him. He didn’t want to rouse, dress in his only neat and clean outfit, and go to church with his family only to have to listen as the pastor damned every sin whilst all the congregation would be able to think of were all the things they’d done in the past week which God would punish them for. Tobias didn’t need the whole town’s trespasses, he had enough momentary wonderings to damn himself several times already.

_You have to get up,_ he told himself firmly, _you have to get the Forgotten Cookies before the oven is stoked for the bread._

And then he opened his eyes.

_Well,_ his mind said, _or there’s that. No Forgotten Cookies for you._

There was enough light coming through the blanket to see by, and Tobias found himself staring at the body of the demon, richly dressed, clearly sleeping, and with a second blanket drawn over his eyes. Tobias stared at what he could see of the monsters face.

_He sleeps with his mouth open._ Tobias considered this. _He has a lot of very sharp teeth._

_What are you still doing staring at it? RUN!_

Tobias waited another half-dozen heartbeats, then twisted around, sprang from the bed, and ran for the door. He knew he was naked, and he didn’t much care, because he had to get away from the thing that had injured him. And there was no time to think about those injuries, or the fact that he was no longer in pain, because he was out the door, running past a pig pen – his presence raising squeals and bellows of hunger from within as the animals brayed for their breakfast – watching the landscape opening up as one he recognised. Hope bloomed in his chest, he could run home from here and be safe, and then his foot turned on a sharp stone, and he fell, yelping in pain, to the ground. The morning dew had been burnt off by the sun already, and Tobias squinted upwards to realise that it was late in the day, and he would have already been missed.

_They’ll come look for me. My father will send someone too see if I’ve been seen…_

_And the demon will kill your brothers, or your little sister. You’re not far from the house, and he would send her over here to check up on the old guy and ask after you. And that thing will kill her – or worse – he won’t. _

Tobias screwed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth against the sob that rose through his gullet. He pressed his fingers over his eyes, then his hand moved over his face, touching the skin around his lips that the demon had healed with its tongue, and he felt something cold around his neck. He tugged at the chain, expecting to break it, and felt a dark anger rise in his mind.

_Don’t do that._

Tobias glared back at the house he’d run from, but there was no movement. Experimentally, he wrapped the chain round two fingers of each hand, and put all his energy into trying to wrench it apart.

There was a snarl inside his mind, anger, annoyance and aggravation all touched by the rich flavour of the demon’s mind. Tobias half hoped the demon would be in pain, then felt instantly guilty, and then stared at himself in internal horror for his concern over the feelings of a demon. He pulled at the chain again.

“I said, don’t do that!” The words were not shouted, but spoken crisp, clear as day, and full of power from the entrance to the little house. The demon stood there, a blanket over its head, clearly squinting as it looked at him from underneath.

_He’s scared of the sun. _Tobias thought. _Keep running._

He stood, turned away, and took a single step.

Before his foot landed on the ground, Tobias was jerked backwards and off his feet as though a rope had been put around his throat and pulled by a cart horse.

“Get back here.”

Tobias turned to glare at the demon in the doorway.

“No!”

He made to stand, but was yanked once more by his neck, hard to enough to make him cough and splutter, and to be dragged half a length across the ground.

He could feel the demon’s anger growing with his defiance, and the force of it scared him.

Then the demon was speaking in his head again, his voice flinty and hard as iron.

_I can drag you all the way back here, kicking and screaming as much as you like. And I will. And then I will break every bone in your legs for the trouble._

Tobias sat up, and stared at the beast. In the shadow under the blanket, all he could make out were the demon’s eyes, brighter than the sun, watching him closely.

_On your feet, Tobias._

He sniffed, dragged his knuckles over his eyes and nose to rub away the tears that prickled at him, and stood up shakily. Every step that he took back towards the house was a physical and mental effort and his inner voice screamed at him. He was, voluntarily, going back to a creature who had hurt him, who had nearly killed him, and who had done things to him he couldn’t even explain inside the relative privacy for his own head. The thought of returning made him sick, and he stopped a dozen yards from the door to heave old blood and stomach bile onto the ground.

The animals, hungry as they were, had stopped screaming for their food, and as Tobias stepped over the threshold, the demon wrapped it’s huge black cloak around his shoulders. Tobias wanted to shrug it off and throw it away, to stand defiant and proud before the creature who had hurt him, but he was too cold and too miserable. The demon shut the door and skulked in its shadow.

“That’s better. Come now, back to bed with you. I’m exhausted.”

Tobias blinked, and looked around the small room, recognising the furniture, the layout, the little trinkets above the fireplace.

“This is Old Man Riley’s place.”

“It was.”

“Did you torture him too?”

“No-” the demon’s thought’s flowed faster than his words, and we’re coloured by his emotions, so even though his voice said “-I just killed him.” in a nonchalant tone, Tobias heard the warmth and softness in his inner ear along with-

_You’re special._

Tobias sat on the edge of the bed, and watched the demon out of the corner of one eye as he resumed the position Tobias had awoken to find him in.

“Sleep.”

“I’m not tired.”

_You’re talking to a demon,_ his mind told him in a perturbed tone. _Why are you so calm?_

“Liar. I can see inside your head, remember Tobias? I know you’re tired. Sleep.”

Tobias made himself lie on the bed on his back, staring at the ceiling, the dusty corner where a spider had weaved a long abandoned web, not really seeing any of it. The demon was warm next to him, comfortingly so, and then it touched him, and Tobias flinched without meaning too.

“What’s that… you have a tail?” He stared at the appendage as it wrapped itself twice around his calf just below his knee – tight enough to feel secure, but not enough to be painful.

“Your eyes don’t work so well in the dark, mine aren’t so good in the sunshine.” The demon said by way of an explanation. “And stop calling me ‘demon’ in that head of yours. I have a name.”

Tobias opened his mouth to speak, then stopped himself.

_You’re about to ask a demon his name, like it means something. The same way you asked the farrier’s new lad his name, hoping he might be more like you and less into impressing every skirt in town. You’re fucked up Tobias._

He resolved not to ask, and shut his mouth again, pulling a blanket up over himself, wishing he could forget that the demon had a hold on his body now too. There was such a long silence that Tobias began to think the demon might have fallen asleep, and then;

“Zai.”

“Pardon?”

Acid yellow eyes stared out at him from under the blanket for a moment.

“My name, it’s Zai.”

“Oh...”

The demon turned his back on the young man, tail still firmly attached to his leg, and fell asleep.

For a while Tobias allowed his mind to spool backwards through time, reliving the horrors of the previous night, melding them with imagined scenes of what might become of his family if they found the demon. He didn’t want to imagine his little sister murdered, and after the third time his mind had shown him another version of the same image, Tobias clamped his imagination shut. There were other things to think about now.

Of the million questions in Tobias’s head ‘why me?’ was the chief among them. Why had the demon picked him, of all the people in town, of all the people in Wessex, to torture? And having tortured him, why was he still alive?

_You heard him, he says you’re special. And that’s got to be an improvement on ‘sinner’._

Tobias scowled as he remembered sitting in Sunday school, what seemed like an aeon ago, listening with his head hung as the teacher had read passages from Leviticus to his peers, explaining with far too much passion that only the love between a man and woman was real and sacred, and that everything else was corruption and the work of the devil. _‘For a man to lie with a man would be as to lie down with an animal’_ she’d said, and the girls had tittered and the boys had made rude gestures at each other. Tobias had tried not to blush, and the following day when the farmer from two valleys over had come to barter for grain and hay, Tobias had known that the way he thought would repulse everyone else if they’d known. The farmer had clapped him on the shoulder before he left, told Tobias’s father that he _‘had a good lad there, y’know’_ and afterwards Tobias had gone to the seriously depleted hayloft and prayed and begged for God to change him and wipe his mind of the thoughts which made him unforgivable. 

Tobias looked around the little house, at the things which Old Riley had accumulated, wondering what the old man would have wanted done with them after he died. He was glad that the demon hadn’t made him suffer. For a while he examined the pattern of slashes and whorls in the glaze of a large water jug which sat on the windowsill, just so that he could focus on anything other than the inside of his head.

_The inside of your place has always been a rubbish place. Too full of other people’s feelings._

_It must be so quiet for everyone else,_ Tobias sighed.

_Yeah, and they fill it by thinking about having sex. _

_Don’t remind me…_

_About the fact that the pastor’s wife day dreams about the choirmaster while her husband is in the pulpit, or the fact that the couple who run the cheese-mongers have attempted to have sex in every room in their shop?_

Tobias shuddered.

He’d never had a word to describe his ability. He knew exactly what his father had called it when he was a child though. The broad shouldered farmer had growled and thundered and begged the old pastor to lift the devil’s curse from his son, and Tobias had wanted to take back everything he’d said that day. The old pastor had reassured his father that Tobias was just highly observant, and told him to make the boy work harder to tire him out, but Tobias had seen the way the man had looked at him ever after, distrust written over his features as he’d genuflected to ward away the evil he was sure resided within the child.

_I suppose I should be grateful that he never told father he thought I was possessed._

_Would your father have thought that a lashing with the belt worked for that too, do you think?_ His inner voice said snidely.

Tobias growled.

_Of course, now I really am possessed. _He glanced over at the sleeping demon, the soft lines of his open mouth against his sharp fangs, and sighed. _I heard him in my head. I could feel what he was feeling. And I could feel what my emotions did to him too._

_Well, maybe that’s why you’re special,_ his inner voice commented dryly.

_I’m a freak._

_Yes. _

_Hey!_ Tobias scowled at himself. _You’re supposed to be on my side._ Tobias knew other people did not talk to themselves like he did, but the only person around to judge him was a demon, and probably had rather different standards for normal behaviour anyway.

_Clearly. He introduced himself by trying to kill you._

_But he didn’t._

_He’s going to hurt you again when he wakes up. You know he will. And he can heal you. He’s going to keep hurting you and healing you until you go completely mad._

_My pain made him feel so good. _

The memory of that bright ribbon of ecstasy was alluring and bold, and Tobias let himself be fanned by the demon’s intense joy. But then he felt his view of the memory twist – observing his own mind instead of the demon’s – and he saw the pain, spiky, dark, a multitude of colours Tobias couldn’t even describe – which had brought the demon such pleasure.

_He got his pleasure by laying you open - in more ways than one - by making you bleed and breaking your bones._ Tobias blinked hard against his tears as he spoke to himself. _His fun is to make you feel the worst you’ve ever felt, or are you choosing to forget that he forced himself inside you and defiled your body? And he’s going to do it again._

Tobias blinked in the gloom, wondering when it had got so late, wishing the window faced west so that he could watch the sunset. They’d been having such good weather for the beginning of autumn, and Tobias always enjoyed watching the sun turn into liquid fire over the sky whenever he got the chance to escape from the kitchen.

_The sun’s going down. He’ll be awake soon._

_He’s going to hurt me again._ Tobias looked across at the fat wooden block where a couple of sharp butchery knifes waited to be used again, then shook his head. _No._

_You’d rather he raped you again?_

_No!_ Tobias shivered all over. _But it’s not like I can just get up and grab the knife anyway. And who says being stabbed would be enough to kill him?_

_I didn’t mean him._

Tobias stopped breathing for a long moment as he realised what his inner voice was suggesting.

_What am I supposed to do? Hit myself in the head until I black out? That’s not a great plan._

_He looks like a deep sleeper, and he’s got really sharp claws._

Tobias rolled his shoulder to get a better look at the demon. Most of him was still hidden under the blanket, but one hand rested, palm up on the bed between them. Tobias stared at the sharp claws, his mind’s eye seeing where they’d been – in the gouges of his skin, dipped in his blood, pressing through his entrance and into the most private space in his body. He did not want that again.

The young man took the demon’s hand, soft, warm, and heavy in his own, and turned it over to lie across his other wrist. The demon slept on, his chest rising and falling in time with Tobias’s own. Tobias held tight to two of the creature’s fingers, the same fingers he’d been intimately invaded with, and dragged the sharp claws diagonally across his wrist.

Pain blossomed instantly, but Tobias barely made a sound. His blood pooled – very dark against his pale skin – then began to flow freely and quickly over his arm, beginning an ever widening stain on the blankets. Tobias watched the life drain out of his body.

_At least he doesn’t get to kill you._

Tobias shook his head at the voice and closed his eyes. His wrist had stopped hurting, but the blood still flowed. The wool stuffed mattress was becoming sodden where his hand rested.

_No._

_No what?_

_No, I don’t want to die. Shit!_

Tobias fought to gain control of his other hand, but his limbs felt sluggish and heavy. He prodded the sleeping demon weakly, but the beast simply snorted and slept on. Tobias growled at himself, and managed to wrap his fingers around one of the slim, pointed horns which jutted from the demon’s temple. He tugged as hard as he could.

“I don’t want to die.”

“Yeah, yeah...” the demon shook in an irritated way, exactly like Tobias knew both his brother’s did when they didn’t want to wake up.

“I don’t want to die.”

“You ain’t dying...” the demon muttered sleepily.

Tobias panted, his heart was slow, his eyes were heavy.

_No, dammit. Live you idiot!_

He wrenched the demon’s horn harder than was comfortable for either of them.

“What?” the demon awoke with an exploding snarl, then paused. “Tobias?”

“Z-Z-Zai! I don’t wanna….”


	3. TL: Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tobias kind of wishes he had died.

Before he’d finished speaking, the demon’s yellow eyes had already turned to his wrist, widening in a very human expression of horror and shock. He didn’t say anything, but vanished from Tobias’s fuzzy sight, and a moment later the young man felt the rough warmth of the demon’s tongue lapping at his wrist followed shortly by the intense prickly pain of his skin growing at a speed which was not natural. The creature continued to lick his wound long past the point where no blood remained on his skin, and eventually Tobias tried to sit up only to find the demon’s hands on his sides, helping him as though he was still weak.

“Thank you.”

“Please, don’t scare me like that again.”

_He’s no idea how long it’s been since I met another empath who wasn’t Nassau._

Tobias was surprised to hear the demon’s voice in his head again, since it was clear his companion was speaking to himself.

“Who’s Nassau?”

“The Prince of Hell.” The demon shrugged, like it was an unimportant fact. “And please stop calling me ‘the demon’, or are you only going to use my name in times of severe crisis?”

“Sor-.” Tobias stopped himself part way through speaking and scowled.

_I’m not apologizing to a creature who tried to kill me._

_He saved you too, _Tobias reminded himself.

Tobias glanced up to find the demon watching him closely, the expression on his face shockingly soft and gentle, as if he understood the way Tobias argued with himself in his head. Carefully, cautiously, Tobias walked his hand across the bed and touched the demon’s forearm. The creature’s emotions crashed through him like the waves on some foreign shore: pride, power, uncertainty, lust, wonderment, doubt, curiosity. Tobias realised he wasn’t the only one with a head full of questions, and he wasn’t the only one who could understand more than what was said.

“Go on, ask.” The demon’s tone was light, almost innocent. “I could try and answer your questions as they are, but you do flit between them bloody quickly. And, dammit all, could you use my name?”

“Say please.” Tobias clapped a hand over his mouth in horror. It was such an ingrained reaction, reminding his brother’s of their manners the way their father had taught them all when they were little children, and Tobias felt his heart hammer faster than galloping hoof beats in his chest. To his surprise, the demon laughed.

“Hahahaha! Well then, of course.” The demon took Tobias’s hand between both his own and smiled warmly. “Please Tobias, would you call me by my name?”

“Um… yes. OK.”

“So go, ask your questions.”

Tobias considered everything he’d learned for a long moment, then went with the one thing which had been bugging him the most.

“What’s an empath?”

Zai arched an eyebrow in obvious surprise.

_Not what I was expecting you to go with_, the demon’s voice murmured in his skull even as Zai began speaking aloud.

“You’re an empath, and I am. And you can hear me in your head-”

“Only some of the time.”

“Don’t interrupt,” Zai said without feeling. “So I suspect, like our Prince, you are probably also a little bit clairaudient. It means you can hear things with senses far finer than just your ears. I can’t. I can feel what you’re thinking, but not the specifics, not unless it’s a _really _strong feeling. But all empaths can feel emotions which aren’t their own.” Zai frowned at him. “You get visions?”

“Er… yeah.”

“An empathic-voyant. Very rare indeed. No wonder I ended up here.”

Tobias let the words he’d been about to say die on his tongue as he saw the thoughts which sped across Zai’s inner vision. He saw the demon in another house, the interior very clearly covered in brand new blood and entrails, and saw him raise his head, twisting round to find something which had caught at his awareness. In the images which followed, there was the sense of travelling, always at night, and hiding during the day in impossibly small spaces. When he watched Zai kill a rabbit almost as big as he was, he frowned.

“Zai, what-?”

“We’re not talking about that.”

“But-”

“Leave it!” the demon snapped, and for the first time in several long minutes, Tobias remembered that the creature he was speaking to was, indeed, a beast of evil. Zai’s rage boiled right under the surface of his mind, a dark, roiling thing, far larger and older than the simple tiny question Tobias had tried to ask. Tobias got the distinct feeling that there was more to Zai than what he’d seen already. The demon smoothed his steel coloured hair back with one hand and continued in a more normal tone of voice.

“I knew there was something out here in the middle of fucking nowhere, I just followed the Northern wind and found myself in the woods, waiting for you as it turns out.”

Tobias gulped noisily as the demon watched him, his smile turning broad as lust surged to dominate all the colours in his mind. Zai was remembering the past night, and Tobias wished he could screw his eyes shut and block out the repeating image of Zai ripping open his thigh as he sheathed himself within his body. Tobias shook so violently that he nearly vibrated out of Zai’s grasp.

“You’re going to hurt me again, aren’t you?”

_You know the answer to that already. And you know why._

Tobias was suddenly reminded that, apart from the demon’s cloak, he was naked. He scrabbled to hide himself, but it was too late, and Zai pinned him flat back against the mattress in a single athletic pounce.

“Please don’t.”

_The begging is awesome…_

“Zai!”

_Oohhhh…_

Zai groaned against him, his sun-yellow eyes half shuttered as Tobias gasped his name in panic, an expression of undeniable bliss on his face. Tobias was surprised to find himself smiling. The demon in pleasure was a sight to behold.

“You like that, don’t you?” Zai purred smugly. He licked Tobias’s neck and then moaned in his ear. Tobias hated that his body responded in such an obvious manner. “I wonder what else you like?”

Tobias knew what the demon was going to do just before it happened, because Zai’s thoughts were clear and banked with the fires of lust which made the pictures bright in his mind. Tobias watched twice and screamed once as Zai slashed open the skin of his bicep, collected his blood, and used it to gain entry to his body. Tobias whimpered and squirmed, kicking Zai in the shin in his attempt to escape. The demon curled his fingers within his inner passage, bringing the sharp points of his claws into contact with sensitive flesh Tobias hadn’t even known he possessed, and he stilled instantly.

“See, you’re learning.”

The young man clenched his teeth and fisted his fingers into the thick blankets, every muscle tense and shivering with the concentration of not moving when all he wanted to do was spring from the bed and sprint away. The demon flexed his digits, and pressed against something bright and warm inside Tobias which flooded him with pleasure so sudden it was almost painful in it’s own right, as though the bottom had been torn from his stomach. Zai was smiling in a languid, satisfied manner, and Tobias glanced at himself in horror to find his own erection waving excitedly at him. He looked away quickly.

_I hate it when that happens. It’s so inconvenient. _Tobias willed the hardness to subside, but it wouldn’t, and then he became aware that the demon was watching him with more than just his eyes. When he looked up, Zai was frowning, though he hadn’t removed his hand.

“Never?” He asked in a disbelieving tone. “Not even for yourself?”

Tobias heard the openness in the demon’s tone, and stamped on it.

“And why would you give a damn, anyway?”

Zai snarled, pressed on the tight, hot place inside him again, and simultaneously dug the claws of his other hand into the taut skin of Tobias’s lower abdomen. The young man wailed, panting, hating to see the dark red spikes of his pain twisted around and spun into a golden skein of pleasure for Zai. When the demon drew back, he sighed with relief, then kicked out again as the demon held him around the back of one knee, and brought Tobias into his lap.

“Don’t, please.”

“Oh Sweetling. The Northern wind brought me to you, and I intend to make use of this present.”

He pressed the blunt tip of his cock against Tobias’s entrance, and the young man did his best to close his mind and body against the invasion. Zai scored his chest, and the pain was enough distraction to allow other muscles to give up their protest. Tobias gritted his teeth as the demon docked the length of his hardness inside his flesh, and turned his face away from the closeness of the demon above him.

_You just left your neck exposed._

The thought flashed across his mind moments too late, and Tobias screamed as Zai bit him. The sensation of his muscles tearing, blood pouring over his skin, combined with the instantaneous prickling of the demon’s peculiar healing talent, and Tobias blinked for what felt like a long time.

He opened his eyes to find the demon fucking him slowly, holding his hips, driving himself deep inside his body in an unhurried manner, and stroking the place inside which had made him quiver so violently with every stroke. Zai’s pleasure was so bold, totally untainted by Tobias’s pain after the demon’s mind had spun it into gold, and Tobias couldn’t help but hold onto that rope with both hands and let the pleasure wash over him even as Zai’s every action filled his head with shame.

It was Zai’s pleasure which made him moan, made him clutch at the demon’s strong limbs as his body tensed. He dug his fingernails into the short grey fur, and Zai responded in kind and punctured both his thighs with all ten claws. Tobias screamed again, his voice pitched perfectly against Zai’s snarl of pleasure, and shook as the demon bent low over him, the pace of his hips increasing.

“Oh, my Sweetling….” the demon took his jaw with bloody fingers, Tobias opened his mouth automatically, not wanting his face torn apart again, and jolted in shock as Zai kissed him.

Every sensation made Tobias reel with emotion, original and borrowed: the demon’s tongue in his mouth, Zai’s low-timbered moan, the nearness of teeth, the taste of blood, the richness of the demon, a flavour as complex as his voice, and the thrum of Zai’s thoughts, the words blurred by passion. The thick, glowing rope of pleasure lay across it all, and somehow, Zai tied Tobias up with it, and the young man cried out as the demon flooded him with sticky warmth even as he lost control of himself too. Tobias wanted to feel ashamed, but there was no space to feel anything other than the pleasure Zai had taken and fed back to him.

For a very, very long moment they lay there together, and then Zai slipped from him and bent to nuzzle his spent crotch and lick his wounds closed. Tobias hid his face in his hands, but when Zai moved to lap at the seed Tobias had so wantonly spilt across himself, he grabbed the demon by the horns and pushed him away.

“NO! I don’t need your pity!”

Zai lent up on one elbow, frowning, his acid yellow eyes bright and confused.

“Pity? Use your head Tobias. There is no pity here.” The demon clasped his thigh with one long fingered hand, and Tobias wished he could draw away from the surge of emotion which played along his bones. Zai was tired in a self-satisfied sort of way, pleased, proud, still a little curious, and… hurt?

_What has he got to be upset about?_ Tobias asked himself with an inner sneer. _He’s got all the power here._

_Has he?_ The other side of him asked silently. _That was some kiss._

_Screw the kiss._ Tobias drew his limbs up to his body, along with one of the blankets, and his the evidence of his arousal within it’s folds. _Why do people spend their whole lives thinking about sex when it’s so dreadful?_

_You think sex is dreadful?_ The thought was so clear, that Tobias had the check that the demon hadn’t actually spoken.

“Seriously? What, is everyone in your town a repressive nut-job or something?”

Tobias grunted wordlessly, and remembered all the times he’d looked at Richard Fletcher only to find the barman visualizing another of his conquests. Every one looked painful and violent.

_And now that you’ve had sex, _Tobias sighed unhappily, _you know that it’s even worse than people make out._

Zai was sitting up now, and Tobias frowned at the expression of genuine shock and concern on the demonic face.

“Tobias, tell me something? You have parents – sorry – _had_ parents, right? They thought about sex?”

Tobias shivered.

“My father did.”

“Show me.”

“No!” Tobias hauled the blanket up over his head, making himself a little cocoon, but he knew that was a useless defence.

“Show me what you saw.”

Tobias had hated seeing inside his father’s head when he was a child, and he’d relived the experience enough in nightmares, when the only person to comfort him was his father, not to want to visit it again.

“But, I was only a kid. I didn’t know what I was seeing.”

And because he didn’t want to see it again, that was exactly what happened, and Tobias watched the memory-picture unfolding in his head. His father’s animal grunts, his mother’s painful whimpers, the sweat, his father’s desire for completion no matter the cost, his mother’s hunger. Tobias shrank back from the memory, and was surprised to feel the presence of Zai in his mind, watching the awful memory with him.

“Oh Tobias...” Zai’s voice came out warm and soft, touched with a note of something like sorrow. The young man felt the sadness shedding from his fur like thick morning mist, and he did not want to touch him. “There’s another thing about empaths I didn’t tell you. Mostly because I was hoping Nassau’s theory was shite.”

“What is it?”

“We’re all broken in some way or other, us empaths,” Zai sighed. “I can’t feel pleasure, not in the normal way. I have to channel it through something else.”

“By hurting me.” Tobias stated. The fact that the demon got such extreme pleasure from hurting him weighed heavily on his mind, but it was a fact, not a question.

“Yes, by hurting you. You on the other hand… you don’t experience love.”

“Yes I do!” Tobias snapped. “I love my little sister, and I love cooking and-”

_Even you know that’s not actual love, _his inner voice mocked.

“Sweetling, that isn’t love. Caring, and friendship, and satisfaction maybe, but not love. That image of your parents, I can see how it looks to you. Dark, hard, almost violent-”

_Just like what you did to me._

“-you think she’s in pain, and he’s forcing himself on her, and she’s letting him because that’s what a wife does, right? You can’t feel the love, the adoration they had for each other, the fact that he would do anything for her, anything at all.”

Tobias blinked. His parents had always seemed happy, in the time when they’d both been alive, and though it was long ago, Tobias watched the images stream past, unspooling from his mind like so much yarn on the spindle, and Zai watched with him. After his mother’s death and his sisters birth, things had been hard, and though Tobias had only been five summers old, he’d taken the baby whenever he could, just to save her from his father’s bitterness.

“You think your father is hard on your sister because he hates her? She reminds him of your mother. He’s protecting her, that’s why he makes you and your brothers work so hard – to keep her safe.” Zai sighed heavily.

_The world has been a horrible place for you, hasn’t it?_

There were a million things Tobias could have said, but he saw the softness of Zai, and saw an opportunity to injure the demon who had damaged him so much. He sneered.

“It only got worse after I met you.”

Tobias could feel how much his words had hurt Zai, the demon speared him with a glare, snarled, and removed himself from the bed. Tobias watched him pace tightly around the little house, but the satisfaction he’d felt at causing Zai even a modicum of pain had already faded. Instead he observed the demon’s movements as Zai stopped, standing over the fire place. He’d almost forgotten that the demon had a tail, but now it was the only part of him which moved, twitching back and forth as Zai stood staring at the cold and empty hearth.

The demon was dressed like the paladins Tobias had seen on painted banners attached the wagons and circus tents which rolled through the town most summers. With his tall leather boots fastened with many buckles, and the heavy belted tabard which left his arms bare, he looked exotic enough without also being covered in grey fur and having horns. Had Zai not attacked him and had he looked human, Tobias wondered if he would have thought of his tall, strong, muscular companion in the same way he had once thought about Richard Fletcher and the farrier’s lad.

“Things you hoped for in fleeting moments without imagining the possibilities of what might happen if you reached outside your shell?” the demon snapped bitterly.

Tobias flinched, as though Zai’s words had slapped him. He didn’t want to be reminded by the demon of any of his failings. He gathered the demon’s cloak tighter around himself, and his fingers brushed against the chain around his throat. He tugged on it gently, and felt the demon’s attention turn towards him, even though he was still looking into the dead fireplace. He was tempted to try and pull it off once again, just to make Zai shout at him.

_You’re a twisted one Tobias,_ his inner voice derided him quietly. _Why do you want him to shout at you?_

_It would be better than being ignored. _Tobias’s stomach rumbled vehemently. _And I'm hungry. I hate that someone else got to eat my Forgotten Cookies._

Just as Tobias was trying to count backwards to work out when he’d last eaten, the demon pulled his tabard off over his head, snarled as the fabric caught on one of his horns, and threw the garment onto the bed as he strode from the room.

“Where-?”

_You could run?_

Tobias wiggled his bare toes, and thought of the way the demon had pulled at his throat the last time he’d tried to leave.

_And it’s dark, and I can’t see. _

_But he can._

_Exactly._

_Never mind._

Tobias was interrupted from the conversation with himself by the sounds of squealing, grunting, the scrape of stone, the splash of… blood? Tobias was half risen from the bed when the door slammed open again, and Zai, naked with most of his fur black with blood, strode through with what was quite clearly half a pig over his shoulder.

“What’s that?” Tobias asked pointlessly.

“You said you were hungry.” Zai rubbed the bridge of his nose with the back of his hand, leaving a bloody smear across his face. “What are Forgotten Cookies?”

“They’re sweets-” Tobias stopped himself. “Why do you care?”

“You care,” Zai muttered. “You know how to cook?”

“Better than that, I know how to butcher too. What did you use to slaughter it? Your hands?” Tobias caught Zai looking guilty for a moment, then retched dryly as he saw flash-fast images of what Zai had done outside. “Forget I asked.” Tobias crossed to the single wooden table, and picked the larger of the two knives left there. When he tested the edge with his thumb, he was pleased to find that Old Man Riley had kept his blades very keen. Then he glanced down at himself, and scowled. “I am not cooking with no clothes on.”

The demon shrugged in a liquid motion that made Tobias scowl. No creature covered in blood and picking gore out of his fur should have been so graceful. There was a solid looking chest at the end of the bed, and within it Tobias found a shirt and trousers, and a pair of socks with holes in the heels. None of it fit well, and all the garments were a little thin, but it was better than being nude. As he dressed, Tobias realised once again how dirty he was, his skin marked with mud, old blood, newer blood, bruises, and the crusted stains of his and Zai’s violent couplings.

_What I wouldn’t give for a hot bath. _

_Actually hot? _

_Yeah. Fresh and not already used twice._

Tobias sighed with longing. High paying guests at the Inn got hot baths with clean water drawn up from the deep well and heated over roaring fires. They banked coals around the base of the heavy bathtub to keep the water hot, and whenever Tobias had to go back out into the rain, wind, and wet snow, he was deeply jealous. Then he blinked, and saw an image of Zai stepping into a waterfall of water, huge billows of steam rising up round him as the demon tossed his head back and closed his eyes, his hair and fur plastered to his skull. Tobias heard him purr, a deep rumbling sound that made his belly warm suddenly, and looked at the demon in the room with him. Zai had lit the fire, and was purring to himself without words.

“Where is that?”

“Zinkara Rumah, the house where I live.” _The water is always hot._

“You don’t always steal other people’s houses and livestock?”

Zai didn’t answer him, but the demon moved aside without looking as Tobias shoved a skillet onto the grate over the fire to heat up. Tobias knew his companion was spying on his mind, but he had not idea how to stop him from doing so. Instead he sliced strips from the belly of the pig, carved and boned-out the shoulder, and rolled it with the torn up remains of an old loaf and some dried sage leaves which had been hanging in a bunch by the window. A quick scavenge of the shelf under the table revealed a clay pot of honey with a broken wax seal, and Tobias smeared it over the belly strips before dropping them onto the hot griddle. He found a second blackened metal pan which had clearly seen better days, placed the pork shoulder in it and set in in the coals, using the tongs to bank the heat around it. Inevitably, because he was distracted by thinking about how nice it would be to have an open hearth and spit with a handle, he caught the back of his hand on the hot edge of the griddle, and yelped in pain. Before Tobias could drop the poker and put his knuckles to his lips, Zai had taken his wrist. Tobias watched as the demon held his gaze, and lapped at his burnt flesh with his long, pointed tongue. His skin tingled, and then the hot pain melted away.

“Why did you do that?”

“You were in pain,” Zai said simply.

Tobias gaped, and slapped the demon across the face. A heartbeat later he was flat on his back on the stone floor, his skull ringing from the impact, the demon pinning him down, face mere inches away and snarling. There was a pitch to that sound that made Tobias’s skin crawl, and he wanted to shut his eyes and think of anything other than the feral creature atop him. Tobias knew, suddenly, that no one had challenged Zai in a long time.

“Let me go.”

“No!” The demon barked.

Tobias used his free hand to pull as hard as he could at the chain around his neck. Zai’s fist closed over his fingers, but the young man didn’t relent, and held the acid yellow gaze as he caused the demon pain. Zai squeezed his hand, and then they were just tossing pain at each other without speaking until Zai lost his patience and cracked one of Tobias’s knuckles. He screamed.

“Let me go!” Tobias pushed himself back into the wall, cradling his broken hand in his lap, watching the demon who crouched, balanced on the balls of his feet, uncaring for his naked, blood drenched state.

“No.”

“Please? I won’t tell anyone what’s happened. No one would believe me even if I tried. I’ll say I hid in the woods from wolves or bears or something. Let me go.”

“I can’t!”

Tobias blinked.

“What?”

“Even if I wanted to,” Zai spat, “and right now that would be an easy fucking option... even if I wanted to let you go, I can’t. That’s a Chain of Possession you’re wearing, it can’t be removed.”

“Never?” Tobias was more horrified than he was by the broken bone in his hand.

“Not from a mortal.”

And that was the thing about being an empath that Tobias had always known. No one could lie to an empath and get away with it, and Zai wasn’t lying. Tobias put his head in his good hand, and cried.


	4. TL: Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which both Tobias and Zai have lots of conversations, mostly with themselves.

“You can’t go back to your life, Tobias.”

_Never. _Tobias sniffed and wiped his eyes ineffectually with his too-short sleeve. _He’s not going to kill you, and you can’t ever go back._

Zai gritted his teeth and wished, just for two long breaths, that he hadn’t collared the boy, that he’d let him die that first night. The thoughts he’d heard were going round and round the boy’s head on loop, it was the only reason Zai had been able to hear his internal voice so clearly, and Zai wondered if the realisation that the situation was permanent had broken his beautiful mind. He hoped not, because when Tobias wasn’t snivelling or slapping him in the face, the young man showed a personality flavoured with complexity and strength that Zai found incredibly attractive.

_It’s like if Nassau was human, and not an all-powerful ruler of the Inner Circle, and not so incredibly fucking terrifying._ Zai watched Tobias as the young man sniffed again, then winced at the pain from his broken knuckle. _I really shouldn’t have done that to his hand._

_No, you shouldn’t have._

Zai smiled to hear the human's voice in his head. The only other person who’d been able to see inside his skull like that was Nassau, and having the Prince of Hell snooping on his depraved daydreams was slightly embarrassing and scarier than Zai liked to admit. But then again…

_Nassau keeps your secrets for you, all of Zinkara Rumah do. Do you have any idea what could happen if Sathriel finds out you’re an empath?_

Zai shook off the thought, and shuffled closer to his companion.

“Here, give me your hand.”

“No.” Tobias sounded grumpy, and Zai didn’t blame him. On the other hand, the boy was thinking about the food, and Zai wasn’t even allowed to cook in the house because anything he took near a fire ended up as charcoal.

“You want your hand to hurt like shit and heal deformed so you can’t use it?” he snapped.

_No._ Tobias didn’t say a word as he offered Zai his damaged hand, but his thoughts were crystal clear. _I hate you._

“Fine. You hating me changes nothing.”

_You’re a terrible liar Zai. You don’t want him to hate you._

_Shhh, _Zai tried to quell in inner voice, aware that as he licked at Tobias’s work-roughened skin, the boy was watching him closely.

_And this is why Sathriel hates empaths. Easy marks, all of you. You’ve known the boy all of two nights and already you have a soft spot for the skinny little human. What is Kiorl going to say if you come home with a…_

_A what? A toy, a pet, a mate?_ Zai felt his breath catch in his chest at the thought. _A mate. _

_Well, that would be novel. _

Zai didn’t want to imagine what the major demon of his household might say if he showed up back in hell with not only a mate, but another empath. Sometimes Kiorl only barely tolerated him anyway. No one in their house had ever recruited.

_Screw that, no one has recruited since Mattias burned to death in the centre of the Grand Hall with every demon in the Inner Circle watching._ Zai shuddered, remembering the beginning of Nassau’s scream of panic and desperation. For a long time after that, Zai had stayed Upstairs, sleeping in the daylight and travelling across the country whenever the shape of the moon allowed, because every time he ventured back to Hell, Nassau’s sorrow at losing the man he loved was so overwhelming it nearly crushed him.

_And you want to go to Nassau and ask for his consideration? Are you insane?_

_Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we? I don’t want to drag him kicking and screaming to the portal._

_You’ve only got one more night._

“Why?” It was almost a shock to hear Tobias’s voice across the room. The boy had moved while Zai had been thinking, and stood by the fire, expertly flipping the hot meaty strips with the toasting fork. “Where do you have to go after tomorrow night?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Zai banished the images from his mind, he was far more practised at that skill than his companion. “That smells good.”

“Are you hungry? I mean, do demons even eat like normal people?”

“For the most part,” Zai crossed the room as he spoke, and placed plates, cutlery, and a pair of glasses on the table, “demons are like normal people. I mean, Sitka will insist on trimming his hooves in the house, and Kiorl is mostly haughty and annoying as dammit all, but-” There was blurring sensation in his mind, and Zai realised he was confusing his companion past the point where the conversation might be useful. “Never mind. Yes, please, I am hungry Tobias, and your cooking smells excellent.”

He watched the young man finish cooking and serve the food, captivated by the lines of his body, the length of his wrist where it stuck out from the too-small shirt, the curve of his earlobe against the dark mess of his hair. When Tobias sat down opposite him and pushed a plate across the table, he was scowling.

“You don’t like that I think of you?”

“Not like that.” The young man shuddered, then fell immediately to eating.

Zai’s nose hadn’t lied to him, and the food was delicious. He cleaned his plate with his fingers, and sucked honey and meat juices off the digits greedily. Nothing that ever came out of the kitchen in Zinkara Rumah tasted this good.

“Is that the place you live?” Tobias asked, obviously eavesdropping on Zai’s thoughts.

Zai nodded, and imagined the house as he’d seen it last, the huge empty kitchen, the den where Kiorl and Shindae had been arguing good-naturedly over a hand of cards, the grand fireplace, his room with its great stone bed, made soft by a dozen layers of furs. He could feel something like longing mixed with curiosity leaking from Tobias’s mind, and Zai smiled happily.

“It’s not so bad, this life. Well, not this one.” He gestured to the room around them, thankful that it wasn’t raining because he didn’t trust the thatch to hold. “I mean back home. We can’t stay here after all.”

“Why not?”

_Aside from the fact that someone will eventually come looking for the old guy who lived here and I’ll have to kill them? Nothing, certainly not the fact by sunrise the day after tomorrow I’ll have changed shape._

“You can change shape?” Tobias sat bolt upright in his chair, surprise writ across his features, and Zai snarled. He hadn’t meant to let that slip out.

“No. I can’t. Leave it.”

“No.” Tobias shot back. “Answer me, dammit.”

_He can swear. That’s a surprise._

_I can do more than that_. Tobias had the knife he’d used to butcher the meat in his hand, and Zai laughed.

“We both know you’re not going to use that. I can rip your heart out of your chest and eat it before you hit the floor. You’re not going to try and stab me.”

“But you’re not going to do that either. You don’t want to kill me.”

“Well you don’t want to die!”

_When did we both start yelling?_

“Then you have to tell me things!” Tobias tossed down the knife and strode around the table. He seized on of Zai’s horns, the demon grabbed his other bicep and found himself looking directly into a pair of blue eyes dark like the night sky he enjoyed so much. “You cannot rip me out of my life, hurt me beyond imagining, tell me I cannot ever go back, and not tell me anything in return!”

“I can do whatever I like. I am a demon.”

_You’re an enforcer. You know better than anyone else that isn’t true._

Tobias frowned.

“Are you in trouble?”

Zai hissed between his teeth, shook the boy off him, and stalked away to the other side of the little house.

“Not any more.” he snarled.

“Tell me, or kill me. Because I already know I’m more stubborn than you are.”

Zai growled.

“I’m not scared of you Zai.”

“Liar.”

Tobias walked up to him, bold as brass, and wrenched him around by one horn. Zai was surprised to discover how much that hurt, but then, he didn’t think anyone had ever touched his horns before.

“I’m scared of the pain.” The truth of Tobias’s words struck him like a hammer. “I’m scared of getting hurt again. I don’t want to, and I know I will, but I stopped being scared of you the second time you raped me.”

_He’s stronger than you thought._

_He’s mad too._

_Crazy and beautiful. Has there ever been a better combination?_

“One day I’ll make you think of what we do together, and you won’t call it that any more.”

“Oh, I doubt it.”

_I don’t lie any better than you do, Tobias._ Zai knew the boy had heard him, because he went suddenly still, and let his hand fall back to his side. There was a long pause where all either of them did was breathe, and watch the other without using their eyes.

“What happens at sunrise?”

Zai snarled. The Northern wind had blown through his mind and brought him to Tobias’s little town, and he’d been forced to hunt on all fours, avoid the daylight, and keep away from bigger creatures who might decide to take umbrage with his presence in their territories. Zai glared at the young man who wore his Chain of Possession.

“What happens at sunrise?” the boy repeated.

“I will change on the third day.” Zai shivered as he remembered the sinking feeling in his stomach, the helplessness that seeped into his bones as his powers left him. Being small and slight wouldn’t be so bad, but Zai couldn’t lick his wounds, and it was lonely in his mind without the press of emotions other than his own. He shuddered as he felt Tobias take his hand whilst the boy’s mind slipped into his own. “I have to go home or I’ll lose myself to that fucking curse.”

“You...you’re a cat….”

“Don’t remind me.” Zai snapped. “Small and powerless, it would be a great curse if it happened to anyone else.”

“But-” Tobias began, but Zai saw the shape of the question in his head, and smirked.

“The Chain has a power all it’s own, it’s not subject to the curse like I am. You still can’t take it off unless one of us dies.”

Zai was expecting Tobias’s eyes to light up, he was half expecting the young man to start plotting about how to kill him right then, what he was not expecting was the sudden flood of cold fear which poured over them both. Tobias hated him, sure enough, but the idea of Zai being dead scared him more than anything else which had happened in the last two days.

_Don’t leave me!_

Zai tried not to smile, and schooled his expression into one of soft reassurance rather than over-eager excitement.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to let what happened to my brothers happen to me.”

Tobias frowned.

“What happened?”

Zai shivered involuntarily. Pain, loss, fear, terror, and desperation whirled and chased each other around in his skull, and Zai closed his eyes, concentrated like Nassau had taught him, and shut down the memories one by one. When he opened his eyes again, Tobias was still standing very close, and Zai saw the sky lightening through the single window behind him.

“I’ll tell you… later. C’mon, it’s getting light. Bed.”

“But… I should wash up.” Tobias gestured to the empty plates, and the fragrant joint of pork still slow roasting in the hearth.

“Leave it. It’s not like we’ll need it again.”

Tobias sat on the bed as Zai arranged the blankets, and laid down when Zai did. The demon reached out and touched his wrist briefly, but he couldn’t feel anything other than his own fear, and the lingering after effects of Tobias’s terror at being alone.

“No running away in broad daylight this time?” Zai asked, softly.

“No.”

Zai pulled the blankets over his head to blot out the ever lightening sky, and wondered if he could tell the human that he too hated being alone. That more than the fear of dying whilst the curse held him in it’s sway, he feared the silence and lack of empathy more. True, Nassau scared him a lot of the time, but the Prince was the only other empath Zai had ever known for more than a fleeting moment, and it was nice not to feel so much like a freak. Zai didn’t know how to tell the boy who hated him any of that, so he didn’t try, but closed his eyes, and fell asleep as the sun came up.

*

Tobias woke to find the demon shaking him gently, and it took his eyes a long time to adjust to the utter blackness which surrounded them. Zai’s eyes glowed like a dying sun, the only point of light in the little house, and by degrees, feeling groggy and disorientated, Tobias found the edge of the bed, put on the demon’s great cloak, and pushed his feet into the nearly-falling-to-pieces boots which were apparently the only shoes Old Man Riley had actually owned. Zai had used the long knife to carve the roasted pork into surprisingly neat slices, and they ate them cold. Tobias could just about make out Zai’s figure standing against the window, looking out at the moonless sky.

“The moon’s not gone. Just behind the clouds.”

_And it hates me._

Tobias opened his mouth to ask what his companion meant, but decided against it.

“We’re leaving in the dark?”

“There ain’t no better way.” Zai replied with a sharp fanged grin.

“I… I thought...”

_What? That he was going to sit and talk to you and tell you all his deepest darkest secrets? He’s a demon, I think expecting sensitively might be a bit much._

_He’s not just any demon._

_You’ve met more than one? When did that happen?_

Tobias scowled at the snarky tone of his inner voice.

_One way or another, I’m bound to him. Is there anything wrong with making the best of it?_

_He raped you twice and tried to kill you. What exactly is the ‘best’ of that?_

Tobias didn’t have an answer to that, but looked to where Zai was standing in the doorway, a black shape against the blacker night, apparently sniffing the air.

“Come on, let’s get going before the weather catches us up.”

The weather held itself in check until they reached the woodland. Tobias felt one drop of rain on his cheek, and then Zai yanked the hood of the cloak up over his head half a breath before the rain came hammering down. The demon was sodden within minutes, his clothes stuck to his fur, and the accumulated blood of the past few nights washed from him like a thin, dark river. Tobias’s stolen shoes were not waterproof in the slightest, as as they walked beneath the trees which were already shedding their broad leaves, he squelched unpleasantly with every step.

_A hot shower and a warm bed. Gods, it’ll be good to be home._

It took all of Tobias’s concentration not to react to Zai’s voice in his head, and instead he continued walking very closely to the back of the demon, stepping in his footprints, and eavesdropping on his mind.

_And what will you tell the others about your new charge?_

_Nothing. Not until tomorrow anyway. _

_There’s that new mirror in the bathroom Sitka and Shindae brought back from their latest trip Upstairs. Just think how good you two will look in it together…_

The words faded into an image of the big steamy waterfall Tobias had seen in Zai’s head before, but this time, he was in it, looking simultaneously at the back of his head and his front reflected in some shiny surface like a still pond pinned to the wall. In the vision, Zai stepped up behind him, and tore his chest open with all ten claws. Tobias stumbled in shock, tripped on a tree root, and fell painfully in the dark.

“Tobias?” Zai sounded concerned, and Tobias realised the demon had forgotten he could see inside his head.

“I’m fine. I just can’t see anything. Dammit!” His attempt to stand was aborted as he tried to rise vertically under a hefty branch. “Ow.” Tobias pulled himself up again and huddled under the cloak. Despite feeling like rich, heavy wool, the inside of the cloak was warm, and dry as the hay in the barn. “Where is this Zinkara Rumah you talk about? Please tell me it’s not much further.”

“Nearest portal is at the river,” the demon replied.

“What?”

In the wet darkness, Tobias could just about see the demon as he turned to look at him. He scrambled to catch him up again.

“Sorry, but… what? What the heck is a portal?”

_Don’t overload him, _the demon told himself so firmly that Tobias couldn’t help but hear him. _There’s only so much a human mind can cope with all at once._

_And yet he saw me right away. He’s stronger than he looks._

_Don’t say I didn’t warn you._

“Tell me Tobias, what do you remember from church?”

Tobias frowned.

“Mostly feeling guilty, and thinking that the glass was pretty.” He tried not to think about the shivers of terror he’d felt when the pastor had ranted about Gomorrah and the eternal punishments that could be wrought on those who indulged in the sins of the flesh. Or the way the organists eyes had raked over his sister when he suggested that she join the choir, even though girls weren’t normally allowed. Tobias remembered being small, sitting on the hard pew next to his mother, holding her hand as her fingers stroked her swollen belly, staring a the shapes and colours the glass had made in the sunlight, and wishing it was warmer.

_The glass is very pretty. Nassau has a window like that._

“Do you remember what your Man of God said about Hell?” Zai, shook his head, and carried on without waiting for an answer. “I guarantee all of it was wrong. Hell is a real place. It’s where I live, and it’s where we’re going.”

“Huh?”

_Don’t stand there with your mouth open boy, _Tobias’s mind did a fair impression of his father,_ you’ll catch flies._

“There is more than one world, Tobias. Many, many more. We just have to find a place where we can cross from one to the other, and we can go home.”

“To your home.” Tobias clarified carefully.

“Yours too, now.”

“How can to cross from one world to another? I mean, it’s not-”

_Possible? How many things have happened to you already that aren’t possible?_ Tobias chided himself silently. _You said you were going along with this ridiculous notion, so go. Unless you want to trip and break your neck in the process?_

Tobias scowled, but didn’t say anything.

“Leave that for now. Come on, we have a lot of ground to cover, and the rain isn’t going to let up any time soon.”

Tobias had a lot of experience with being wet and cold, which was handy, because for the next few hours, he didn’t allow himself to think of anything other than the chill creeping through his limbs, and the ever increasing squelchyness underfoot as his stolen shoes came apart at the seams. The parts of him covered by the demon’s great cloak were alright, but the cloak didn’t lace up at the front and the rain seemed to be able to find every little crevice to drip and soak into. Tobias found himself thinking how nice it would be to be properly dressed, or to have tall boots obviously kept in good repair like the ones Zai wore. His father had always said there was ‘no such thing as bad weather, boy, only inappropriate clothing’ and Tobias missed his thick padded jacket and the broad brimmed oiled hat he wore when he had to walk out in the rain.

_I suppose at least in Hell it’ll be warm._

“We’re here.”

“We are?” Tobias glanced around at the fast thinning trees and frowned to himself. “There’s nothing here.”

“Stop looking with your eyes. There’s plenty here Sweetling.”

_You’d better not call me that in front of other people._

“Or what?” Zai challenged softly.

Tobias sent him an image of Zai eating, a snap, and howl of pain when one of the demon’s fangs came away in his hand.

“I’m betting they don’t grow back just by licking.”

There was a long pause, and then the demon laughed. The sound made was like warm mead sliding down his gullet as heat blossomed in his belly, and Tobias wondered quite how broken he was to have such a reaction to the demon. Zai moved to stand behind him, and Tobias struggled as the demon took his jaw in one firm hand.

“Oh hush, I’m not going to hurt you. Just look. Really look.”

Tobias did as he was bid, and focused on the area Zai was pointing him at. His eyes had grown used to the dark by now, and he could make out the tones of the sky, the bank opposite, the rain splattered surface of the river, the water high with the tide coming in, the scrubby growth of grasses and reeds choking the near embankment. Tobias tried to look the way Zai had told him to, but the needs of his body – still hungry, wet, cold, achy, something pointy trying to poke into his foot – distracted him.

_Here. Let me._

Tobias managed not to flinch as Zai’s hand came up to cover his eyes, his soft furred fingers parted just enough that Tobias wasn’t totally blind. The young man’s heart hammered hard in his chest, and he felt warmth suddenly building deep in his body somewhere, like dying embers which were coaxed once more into bringing forth light. He knew he should be scared, but he wasn’t. Zai wasn’t going to hurt him, not right now, and the demon couldn’t lie to him either.

_Look. Feel the world around you. It’s not just people who have hidden depths._

And like removing another set of eyelids he hadn’t known existed, Tobias saw what Zai was talking about. The world around them was made of patterns – the dense undulation of the water, the slick shards of the grasses, edges blurring as they sunk into the thick mats of the ground – and where Zai had pointed his vision, the patterns were visibly thinner and faded like fabric which had been worn and washed too many times.

_Like this shirt,_ Tobias thought bitterly.

“I’ll get you new clothes.” Zai’s words were accompanied by a flash-fast image of Tobias imagined in a similar sort of outfit to Zai’s own, and the young man turned in the tight space of the demon’s arms.

“Uh-uh. Trousers. I’m not negotiating.”

“But-” Zai stopped himself before he could finish speaking.

_You’re already asking a lot of this boy. Don’t push it right now._

Tobias smirked.

“And don’t call me boy.”

Zai scowled, and stepped back.

“So, this is the portal?”

“No, this is just the place where we can cross over. The world is thin, and we can find The Way home from here. This is a portal stone,” Zai withdrew a strange object from some hidden pocket inside his tabard, “it’ll get us home.”

The portal stone was about the size of a goose egg, and made of what Tobias first thought was glass, but seemed after a moment to have internal fractures like a piece of crystal. The rain did not fall on it, and Tobias was mesmerised as the stone began to glow faintly in Zai’s hand.

“Come here. Closer.” There was a note of speed and panic in Zai’s voice which made Tobias frown, but he went to stand in the circle of the demon’s arms quickly. “There are lots of places to go in The Way-” The inside of Zai’s head was full of stars, a mass of darkness dotted with millions of points of light, many bright and close, others distant and duller, “-it’s really easy to get lost. Just… hold on, OK?”

“Yes.”

The portal stone glowed brighter, casting a rich orange light around them, and Tobias craned his neck skyward as the rain vanished, hoping to see the moon, and nearly yelped in surprise to find that the two of them were standing in a dome surrounded by falling raindrops. He wanted to ask how it worked, but the stone appeared to burst into flames in Zai’s hand. The heat of the fire was held in check by the crystal walls of the portal stone, but only just.

“Close your eyes.”

“Why?” Tobias felt the thread of fear between them, and realised it wasn’t his emotion it was feeling. “Zai, are you scared?”

“Yes.” The demon’s expression was so honest and without agenda that Tobias was almost shocked by how different he looked. “Just, close your eyes. Do it.”

Tobias was going to, but the stone was burning fiercely in Zai’s outstretched arm, and it was so bright that it was hard not to look at it. The brightness grew, and Zai grabbed his jaw and kissed him hard. Tobias closed his eyes automatically as his mouth was plundered, and the brightness – along with the world around them – promptly vanished.

It rained for a while longer, but eventually the clouds parted and the surface of the river became still and quiet. The moon, nearly full now, drifted ponderously across the sky. A fish flittered by beneath the surface of the water, there was the soft sound of animals moving in the woodland, and one by one, the creatures of the world came out of their dens and burrows, and the places where the demon had been returned to normal. A rabbit cropped the grass, an owl swooped low overhead and sent the creature scurrying for the shadows, and after a long time, the sun came up.


	5. TL: Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tobias discovers that Hell has bathrooms. Really good bathrooms.

_He lied._ It was the first coherent thought that made it into Tobias’s mind. _That bastard, he lied. He is going to hurt me._

Tobias opened his mouth to scream, but there was no sound, no air, no sensation of his body or his lungs, or the hands which he knew he was clenching into fists. There was nothing but pain, and a heat so intense it was almost cold.

_I am inside the portal stone. He trapped me in here._

_That’s fucking ridiculous._

Tobias tried to open his eyes, but he didn’t have any eyes he could find, which meant the searing brightness which surrounded him was somehow inside him, ripping through him with its flaming hot winds and carving away at his soul. There was nothing to feel but heat and pain, and Tobias thought he’d have much rather been lost in the beautiful starry blackness he’d seen inside Zai’s head.

_No you wouldn’t. It’s freezing in The Way._

Tobias reached out – though not with his hands – and clung tightly to Zai’s rich voice in his head.

_Where are you!?_

_Here. Right here. _

_Zai! I’m scared!_

_Why? _

Tobias felt the shadow of a touch, Zai’s soft fur against his cheek. Then the familiar sharpness of his claws, and Tobias raised a hand and slapped the demon. He blinked, and suddenly he was standing exactly where he had been, inches away from Zai, in another world.

_I thought there would be stars…_

“You missed The Way. You tried to read the emotions of the portal stone. I wouldn’t recommend doing that again any time soon.”

Tobias’s eyes crept from Zai’s face, and he looked up, and up. The sky was pitch black and so close that Tobias felt like he could have touched it from the top of the hay barn roof, dotted with bright points that were not stars and which gave much more light than should have been possible.

“Z-Z-Zai?”

“Yes, Sweetling?”

“Where are we?”

Zai took his chin again, smiled broadly, and turned Tobias in his arms to show him the view. The land was black, rocky, and strange; there was a dish shaped valley apparently ringed by walls of fire which reached the near-sky up above; orange liquid-fire rolled, sloshed, and crawled across a landscape dotted with large blocky buildings. In the centre of the valley was a building, or collection of buildings unlike anything Tobias had ever seen. His vision blurred as he tried to look at it, as though the very structure itself didn’t want to be made out too clearly.

“Welcome to the Inner Circle of Hell.”

_Oh dear God in heaven…_

_He is a demon_ , his internal voice reminded him. _ Where did you think he lived?_

_But… But… _Tobias couldn’t even find the words to deal with what he saw in his own mind, and then another person passed across his vision, and he yelped.

“I was just starting to think you weren’t going to come back,” the creature rumbled in a voice so deep it had it’s own reverberations, “you’ve been gone since before Eostra. You still have your chit?”

“Do I ever lose them?” Zai replied flippantly, and handed some small object over to the hulking figure who stood apparently on guard at what Tobias already knew, just by existing, was a portal. “Graccas, this is Tobias.”

_Don’t worry, you don’t need a chit._

_I’m going to need new trousers in a minute._

Tobias did his best not to gape and stare at the beast before him. Graccas was like the evil bull the beef farmer on the other side of the hill had owned, but multiplied by a factor of nightmare that Tobias didn’t want to think about.

“A pleasure to welcome you at the West Portal, Tobias.”

“T-t-thank you.”

When Zai took his arm, Tobias went with him, unresisting, because his mind was too busy trying to fit everything he saw into a category he understood. Words he’d never known before – lava, magma, basalt, naga, tentacle – made it into his mind without his permission, and it was only when Zai stepped up off the fairly well-trodden path they had been following and began to lead him at an angle up a scree slope which hurt his feet through the worthlessly ruined shoes he wore, did Tobias realise the demon had been filling him in as they walked.

“Zai?”

“Yes?”

“Why do the stars look weird? And why are there no trees? And how come it’s so bright when-”

Zai held up a hand to stem the flow of questions.

“If you ask me everything at once, you’re going to drown us both. Pick one.”

Tobias frowned at his companion for a moment.

“Those aren’t stars, are they?”

“No.” Zai reached out and took his hand as they walked up the uneven surface. At the top of the slope, they took a sharp turn between the sheer walls of a ravine which had apparently appeared out of nowhere, and then another turn which brought them up a soft hill where a river of fire flowed in thick loops and curves. “Those are campfires. They say that the souls of dead demons live up there in the sky, waiting for the end of the world and the last great battle. They’ll come down and join us, and we’ll meet the enemy wherever they happen to appear.”

“And you believe that?”

“Weirder things are true. Why not? Demons aren’t real religious or anything, it doesn’t matter if you don’t believe.”

_Why is he being so nice?_

_Well that’s depressing. Am I going to spend the rest of whatever life I have left doubting his intentions whenever he speaks to me?_

“Tobias.”

The young man turned and looked at the demon. In Hell, it was much lighter than it had been in the darkness of the night, and for the first time, he could see Zai properly. His ash-grey fur looked soft as velvet, and it was so short around his eyes and mouth that Tobias could make out the pinker tones of his skin. The way he stood was almost human, only the swishing of his long tail giving his form an otherworldly presence. Tobias hadn’t noticed the tufted tip before, or the darker shade of Zai’s slightly curly hair from which his horns rose, sweeping quickly back over his head. He also hadn’t noticed the demon’s high, sculpted cheekbones, or the strong lines his shoulders made in his tabard.

_I cannot lie to you. _Zai was directing his thoughts very clearly. _And I won’t try. I will hurt you, physically, often. But you are important to me. You can trust me. I need you._

“You do?”

“Yes. Would you like to see our house?”

“Ours?”

“We share with other people too.” Zai sent him a flash fast set of images of four other people of various shapes and colours. “You’ll meet them in due course. Come on, I think I promised you a shower. This way.”

Zinkara Rumah sat on the crest of the hill like a long, squat, black brick. As they approached, Tobias couldn’t help but stare. It wasn’t like any house he had ever seen or heard of, there were no windows, the roof was flat, and it was somehow constructed from a single piece of glossy black rock, and as they approached the gaping maw of the open doorway, Tobias turned to see the view of the Inner Circle laid out before them.

“We have the best view of the Palace. Kiorl says we’re the Prince’s favourite house.”

Tobias gaped as they crossed the threshold into the house.

_If our house is like this, what’s it like in the palace?_

The stone floor was smooth and clean underfoot, and the dark walls were hung with thick tapestries and banners. Every few feet there was an alcove carved into the wall, some only the size of his fist, others as taller than he was, each filled with light which burnt like candles. There were wide arched doorways left and right, and a passage which wove under the enormous staircase in front of them. Zai ushered him upwards with a hand on his elbow, and Tobias was almost tired by the time they finished climbing the broad steps which felt like they would never end. Tobias found himself in a long plain corridor, lit with the same flaming alcoves as the main hall, but the doors which flanked them either side were of far more normal proportions. Zai steered him to the only door which stood open, and Tobias came to such a complete stop that Zai walked into the back of him.

_There’s water everywhere, and it’s warm. I’ve never been anywhere so beautiful in my life._

Zai chuckled.

“You weren’t lying about the bathroom….”

“Nope. Ah fuck, but I’ve missed plumbing.” Zai had already begun to strip out of his clothes, dumping the dirty pile unceremoniously on the floor. “Come on, come join me Tobias.”

Tobias took the hem of the old shirt in his fingers, and had it half over his head when he caught sight of himself in a mirror of such clarity that it startled him. He dropped the shirt, and didn’t notice when it simply vanished, because he was too busy staring at himself.

Apart from his reflection in the river on a still day, or in the tiny, clouded hand mirror which had belonged to his mother and was kept locked away in a drawer in his father’s room, Tobias had never seen himself. The shock was as great as seeing Zai for the first time, and Tobias wondered if his eyes had always been so dark, or his chin so square. He pressed a hand to his chest, dirty and marked with old blood, and the little smooth and painless scars left there by Zai’s claws. He moved to touch the chain Zai had captured him with and frowned. It had been a simple slip of silver chain, but no longer. The necklace rested across his collar bones, a series of patinated round silver shields, each carved to be slightly different from the next, and in the centre of the thick collar was a gemstone the exact shade of Zai’s acid yellow eyes. Tobias touched the gem that rested in his clavicle, and found that it was warm.

“Protection,” Zai explained before Tobias could ask him, “No other demon can hurt you whilst you wear it. They will all know that you are mine.”

_I belong to no one! _ Tobias thought fiercely.

_This is not something you want to fight him on,_ his inner voice said in a reasonable tone. _Better the devil you know, right? Or would you rather take your chances with Graccas? Or any of the other demons who live here?_

“You are very beautiful Tobias.”

Tobias ripped his gaze away from the mirror and stared at his companion. Zai’s arousal was obvious, and despite the draw of the waterfall which fell in a never ending torrent from a high shelf near the ceiling, Tobias stepped back from him, his limbs suddenly shaking with fear.

“Come.” With Zai’s words came a slight pressure from the Chain around his neck. “Come be warm and clean.”

Tobias removed the rest of his stolen clothes with trembling fingers, and walked around the edge of the great square bathpool set into the floor to the smooth platform where Zai stood waiting for him. The demon offered him a hand, and Tobias took it carefully. Zai was full of warmth and satisfaction and desire.

_Blow Northern wind, and bring me my Sweetling._ The demon was humming to himself, reciting the words in his head. _I couldn’t have wished for better._

Tobias stared at Zai, and realised that, despite being able to see in the dark, it was the first time the demon had seen him in good light too. Then they stepped under the water, and all other thoughts fled from his head.

Never had anything else felt so good. Tobias had spent the last few days and nights cold, wet, and in pain. He’d spent most of his life wishing to be warmer, or cleaner, or better dressed in clothes which didn’t itch and weren’t second- or third-hand. Even in the summer, when the sun roasted anything that dared move in the fields, he’d been sticky and itchy with sweat and bits of chaff stuck in his hair or in the seams of his clothes. Now he stood beneath the stream of hot water, steam rising around him, closed his eyes and threw his head back as the grit, mud, blood, dirt, and semen washed from his skin. Zai pressed into his hand a palmful of what appeared to be glue-like sand, and Tobias instantly set to scrubbing his skin, everywhere he could reach, and watched as the water turned faintly grey and ran away into a crevice in the floor. Zai was soaping his fur, scrubbing with his knuckles at his scalp, and Tobias reached past him to the ledge which held more of the soap-sand he wanted to wash his hair with. The action brought his body into contact with Zai’s own, and he froze, petrified of what he felt.

_Just wash your hair._

_Please…_ Tobias knew his begging would do nothing to change the immediate future. _Please don’t hurt me again._

_Just wash your hair._

Zai helped him, because he was shaking so much, and that only made the shaking worse. Tobias hated that he was missing the most relaxing experience for his life – standing under the heated waterfall which seemed it would never end – because he was so scared of the inevitable future.

_I wish he would just hurt me already and get it over with._

_Are you completely twisted? Run as fast as you can and get away from him. One of those doors must lock._

_Anything would be better than waiting and wondering._

_You’re a sick bastard, you know that?_

_Yes. I just don’t want him to do _that_ again._

Just as Tobias thought it, he felt the heat of Zai behind him, and the demon wrapped an arm round his side and pressed his hand across his chest.

“Zai… don’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No. You’re not.”

Zai rumbled something indistinct which Tobias couldn’t make out, and kissed the side of his neck. It was such an unexpected motion, because Tobias had been expecting teeth and pain, that he whimpered and leant into Zai’s touch. The demon kissed him again, his soft lips moving down to the joins of his shoulder as his neck, and his other hand began to smooth down Tobias’s spine.

_He hates it, and somehow that makes it all the brighter. _

_You’re fucked up Zai, even for a demon. No wonder the guys never want to share their prizes with you._

Tobias gasped at Zai’s private thoughts in his head, and the sensation distracted him as his body was breached by Tobias’s claw tipped fingers. He wanted to brace himself against the wall as his knees threatened to collapse, but it was behind him, and so Tobias reached up and found one of Zai’s short horns, and clung on for dear life.

_Fuck, that’s hot._

The demon wasted no time with preparations, but removed his fingers, and then Tobias set his teeth in his lip to keep from begging the demon once more to cease as he felt the head of Zai’s hardness pressing at his entrance.

His shame was like a hot snake coiling up in his belly, rising in his gullet, and making him wish he could curl up into a ball and hide somewhere dark and quiet. But Zai saw that shame and used it to feed the bright spark of pleasure inside his chest as he sheathed himself within Tobias’s body in a single fast movement which made the young man scream. When Zai’s claws rent the skin and muscle over his heart, it was almost a relief to experience pain he could deal with, and Zai’s pleasure began to glow like the sun. Tobias wanted to feel that heat, that burning ecstasy, and reached for it.

_Join me._

“Ahhhhh!”

Zai’s pleasure was like a fire brand, hot, sharp, bordering on excruciating, but so delicious that Tobias swallowed it down as fast as he could, taking in the flavour of the demon, watching himself getting fucked and hurt under the waterfall as though he was outside his body. And Zai was right there, the core of him exposed. Tobias reached back and pulled Zai’s mouth down to his neck, and the demon bit him hard, made him scream, and the pain fed the bright pleasure between them until they were both shaking and sweating, watching the waterfall wash away Tobias’s blood and the evidence of his orgasm. Tobias knew, because Zai couldn’t lie to him, that the demon had never experienced such a high in all the countless years he’d lived.

_You smug bastard. You’re sick._

_I’m special._

_Freak, _his mind retorted before falling silent.

Zai licked at his wounds as Tobias stood before the mirror, supporting himself on the cold white sink because his knees didn’t work very well. When the demon was finished, he wrapped each of them in towels so enormous and fluffy Tobias couldn’t imagine the size of the loom which had woven them, and led him across and along the hall to an unremarkable wooden door.

There was a room lit with glowing alcoves, and a bed covered in furs, and Tobias had not a single other thought in his head.

He slept.

*

_You are sleeping in the bed of a demon. In his house. In Hell._

_It’s our bed now._

_You’re screwed in the head. You’re sleeping with a demon._

_No. He’s not here._

Tobias didn’t need to open his eyes to confirm that he was alone in the room. Even when neither of them were speaking, he’d been able to feel Zai’s emotions, and had known the demon was there when he’d stirred in the pitch blackness. It turned out when Zai wasn’t hiding under blankets from the sun, that he was the sort of sleeper Tobias could only describe as ‘clingy’, and Tobias had spent much of the night with a well-muscled furry arm wrapped snugly around his waist.

After a while of lying down in the deep dish of furs, wondering if he could go back to sleep, Tobias’s stomach growled, and he became aware that it was no longer fully dark. He sat up.

Zai’s room – their room – was lit by the same slim alcoves as the rest of the house, and sparsely furnished. Apart from the bed, which was very comfortable for it’s unconventional shape, there was a foreboding looking wardrobe of dark wood with intricate carvings, and a similar chest next to it. A single stone ledge ran along the wall above the bed, and Tobias knelt in the furs to examine the contents.

Zai clearly wasn’t one for knick-knacks, but there was the transparent portal stone, several leather pouches in various styles, a small black-bladed knife the length of Tobias’s thumb, half a dozen metal objects Tobias assumed to be belt buckles, and a pack of playing cards next to a stack of painted oblong wooden tokens. Tobias picked up the portal stone gingerly, but as he held it, nothing happened, and Tobias was relieved.

_Relieved? Are you totally insane? Why aren’t you running for the door?_

_And run to where, exactly? _Tobias scowled at himself. _I’m staying._

_He hurt you again._

Tobias ran his fingers over the fresh pink scars across his chest and smiled at the memory of how Zai had looked in his head.

_Maybe it was worth it._

_You’re sick._

_Probably_. Tobias’s stomach growled again. In a house this size, there must be some kind of kitchen.

Folded neatly atop the ornate wooden chest were some clothes. A quick glance in the wardrobe demonstrated that it was full of mismatched bits of steel and leather armour, more belts than Tobias could count, various tabards and jackets, and a selection of lengths of cloth which Tobias wasn’t at all sure about. There were several pairs of tall boots, but none in a size that would fit him. Upon investigation the folded cloths turned out to be a white shirt with a wide collar, full sleeves, and lacing in a style Tobias was used to, a pair of incredibly thick and fluffy socks he pulled on immediately, and a pair of trousers made of some kind of stiff blue canvas. They had many pockets, and once Tobias had pulled them up he found himself looking down at a row of tiny metal teeth at the level of his crotch. He frowned.

_A zip._

It was the memory of Zai’s voice in his head, rather than the presence of the demon, and Tobias realised the sensation was coming from the clothes themselves. He followed the wordless instruction, and fastened the jeans with a small smile.

_He knew I wouldn’t know what to do. He must have spent ages standing there and thinking about it in order to send that clear a picture._

_So you’re going to forgive him for raping you?_

_No. I don’t know. Does it matter?_

His inner voice fell curiously silent, and Tobias stepped out of the room and into the long passageway. He couldn’t remember the direction to the grand staircase, and so turned left to find himself instead on a landing between two sets of stairs, one up and one down, which were narrow and unadorned. He padded downstairs and swallowed a yelp of surprise when he found himself in a kitchen which made the one at the Inn seem like a toy in comparison.

Tobias ran his fingers along a long chest-high counter of polished stone, set on one side with an assortment of stools, and turned around the end to find more cupboards and equipment than he suspected even the King of Wessex’s kitchens boasted. There was a fire pit with two spits, one set above the other, and attached to a chain pulley system, and a long low stone and clay oven which was still hot. Set against the back of the stone counter was a big metal box with several doors, each one of which when opened blasted out different amounts of warmth, and a series of black circles on the top. A quick touch of his hand made Tobias stick his fingers in his mouth as he moved along to a great white square basin, topped with a pair of metal pipes and dials. Water came rushing out at the turn of the tap, and Tobias leapt back in amazement.

_This is a weird place._

Tobias found a large black kettle, filled it with water, and set it on one of the hot circles. His search for tea revealed several bins filled with dry goods, some of which he could name, and a door set flush into the wall which was taller than he was. Tobias heaved it open with both hands, and stepped into the frigid air. The larder was cold, cold enough to make him shiver and rub his arms. Set around the edge of the square room were blocks of blue ice up to his knees, shedding clouds of cold as he watched. Hanging on hooks from racks around the rooms were chunks of meat and sides of animals ready butchered and skinned – though Tobias wasn’t sure he could name many of them, and an enormous selection of vegetables on the shelves.

_You’re a cook, this is a pantry you can work with._

Tobias picked up a small woven basket of what he really hoped were eggs, and took a long sharp knife in order to carve thin slices from the meat which, against his fingertips at least, was texturally closest to cured pork. Then he began sniffing vegetables and bunches of herbs, picking things which smelt good and looked fresh. Locating a frying pan took a while longer, but eventually Tobias stood at the counter, slicing something which smelt like a cross between onions and garlic, whilst a lump of yellow fat melted slowly in the pan. He hadn’t found any tea, and the kettle of hot water sat to one side, steaming forlornly.

“Smells good.”

Tobias yelped, jumped and narrowly avoided dropping the knife point down into his own foot.

_Concentrating so much you never heard someone sneaking up on you? Have you learnt nothing from being attacked in the night?_

Tobias looked along the counter to where a demon stood, smiling at him. He took in the black skin crawling with lava, the eyes like pools of magma, and wished he could just go and shut himself back in the cold pantry.

“I’m Shindae. Zai mentioned you were a bit skittish, but I had been hoping he was exaggerating. Unfortunately not.”

Tobias ducked quickly to scoop up the knife without taking his eyes off the demon, and grasped its handle hard, using a grip which would be useless for chopping vegetables. Shindae’s eyes flared with light briefly as he noticed the motion, and Tobias felt the bubble of his mirth just before he chuckled.

“I ain’t here to hurt you, boy. I live here too. And this is the best smell that’s come out of this kitchen in a _long_ time.”

Tobias frowned, and spared a glance for his array of ingredients.

“But you have so much interesting food just hanging around...”

“Don’t mean a damn thing if none of us can cook, boy. We’re lucky if one of us can even be bothered to roast something without burning it. I mean, Inai eats his dinner still wriggling, so it’s just the four of us, and you now I suppose.” Shindae smiled again. “Stop starin’ kiddo, you’re gonna burn your food.”

Tobias blinked, then went back to his frying pan and began to toss his ingredients around with a wooden spoon. For a lack of anything else to do, he broke the eggs into a bowl, pleased and surprised when they appeared to be perfectly normal in texture and colour, and beat them with a fork made of bone. Shindae was seated now, arms folded on the bar, watching him with interest. Tobias fried off his thinly sliced meat, smiled at the distinct bacon-y aroma, and wondered what went on inside the mind of demons who weren’t Zai.

Shindae’s head felt warm, too warm, and full of curiosity, an eagerness to explore which Tobias had always associated with children before that moment, and humour which was just waiting for any outlet it could find. It didn’t feel much like the mind of a demon.

_I suppose he’s pretty if you go for that dark-eyed and brooding sort of thing. It’s gonna be weird having a human in the house._

Tobias managed not to yelp as the vision of a snarling black feline beast snarled wordlessly in Shindae’s memory.

_Kiorl,_ Shindae labelled unconsciously. _Maybe he’ll be happier when he meets the kid. After all, he’s only a human. And he cooks, maybe we lucked out and Zai will keep him forever._

Tobias withdrew from the demon’s mind, and found Shindae chatting idly about something Tobias hadn’t caught the start of, and so didn’t understand. When the demon turned to look at him, Tobias frowned.

“Don’t call me ‘boy’, or I won’t feed you.”

_Fiesty…_

“Alright.” Shindae shrugged, like it was nothing.

Just as Tobias was about to flip his omelette, he felt a dark, powerful, hungover presence close enough for his mind to listen in automatically.

_I’d better have been fucking dreaming that Zai recruited some skinny little human._

Then there was Kiorl, all black fur, panther fangs, and blue-streaked mohawk, glaring at him with feline distaste. Kiorl’s head was a mess of emotions, surprise and irritation being chief among them, but just as Tobias was going to examine the flinty-flavoured emotions more carefully, he found himself – abruptly and painfully – shut out of Kiorl’s head.

“Hey Ki, this is-” Shindae began.

Kiorl snarled.

“You’re a fucking empath!”

  



	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tobias cooks, and finds his voice.

Tobias yelped, snatched up the knife from the chopping board, already knowing it would do him no good whatsoever, and scrambled for the pantry door as Kiorl came around the end of the long counter. Shindae was still halfway through his interrupted introduction, half rising from his stool, as Tobias slipped inside the cold-store and pulled the door shut with a thud. From the kitchen beyond there was shouting, voices raised but indistinct, a wash of various levels of surprise, hurt, indignation, resentment, shock, and then the scrape of what Tobias knew, not because he was an empath but because he’d worked in a tavern, was a wooden chair on stone, and the splintering of said chair over someone’s head.

“You fucker!”

After a pause, there was a soft knocking at the door, and Tobias suddenly realised how incredibly cold he was, crouching in the pantry, surrounded by blocks of blue ice he was fairly certain by now were actually enchanted.

“You can come out now,” said a third voice. “I talked sense into them.”

“You hit me over the head with a chair!”

“It worked didn’t it?” Shindae’s smooth voice was already filled with mirth once more. “Anyway, I think he was aiming for us both. This is why we don’t let you have ranged weapons, Sitka.”

“Shut up, bud.” Sitka’s voice returned, speaking low and softly, like the way Tobias’s father used to talk to wary animals. “Look, we’ll all be on the other side of the bar, and I promise Kiorl will control his temper. Come out, you’ve gotta be freezing.”

Tobias waited for a while, until he counted the scrape and sigh of people settling onto furniture and worked out that unless someone else had slithered in, the demons had in fact done as they had promised. He pushed the pantry door with his shoulder, and crept out into the kitchen.

On the other side of the long stone counter, Shindae now sat with Kiorl, who speared him with narrowed eyes, and a person – who must have been Sitka – who had dusky, plum-black skin, eyes like polished onyx, and spiralled horns like a ram. He was wearing half of a set of pauldrons, a leather bracer on his other arm, and an easy smile which revealed two very sharp teeth.

_He’s just a kid._

_Fucking empaths._

_I wonder if he’ll ever finish cooking, and feed us?_

“Kiorl, you wanna say something to our new housemate?” Sitka prompted.

“Stay out of my fucking head.” The panther turned to glare at the horned demon. “You ever try that stunt again, I’ll turn you into a stain on the fucking floor.” Kiorl spared Tobias a last, lingering, hateful glare, and stalked from the room.

“Well, that could have gone worse.” Shindae commented with a shrug. “You do know he could have killed us both, right?”

“Kiorl’s a pushover when he’s not pulling rank.”

“Never let him hear you say that, bud.” Shindae turned to Tobias. “If you’re wondering where Zai is, he left word that he’d gone to Stores-”

“Again,” Sitka interjected.

“-and then he was going to the office to get some time off. To spend with you.”

Tobias gaped, not caring that his omelette was burning.

“Zai has a job?” he uttered, and the other two demons laughed heartily.

Tobias scraped his failed first omelette into a carved opening in the wall which Sitka told him was ‘for the trash’, and began to slice another garlicky onion into translucent rounds. The scent of frying made his stomach rumble loudly.

“When was the last time you ate?

“Yesterday… I think. No, the day before. Sunday night.” Tobias frowned. “What day is it?”

“Buck mese is nearly over,” Shindae rubbed his scalp with two lava stained fingers, “but the Summas festival isn’t for another tenday.”

“It’s Nonae. You never could keep a calender straight in your head.” Sitka smiled. “So did Zai not tell you where he was going?”

“Zai didn’t...”

_He didn’t tell you anything. He’s never told you anything useful, other than to let you know that he owned you now. He left you helpless._

Tobias scowled at his inner voice, poured the beaten eggs into the frying pan, and didn’t look up.

“Zai’s an enforcer; and a high ranking one too. Sometimes he works for the Palace directly. His job is to ensure that people who draw the Prince’s ire know how much they displeased him.” The inside of Sitka’s mind was suddenly awash with an image of some street somewhere under a blue sky, the cobbles drenched with fresh blood, and Zai – snarling, eyes brighter than the sun, scarier than Tobias had ever seen him – holding some other demon with green skin and teeth instead of eyes up by what Tobias assumed was its throat. “Your mate is a scary bastard when he wants to be.”

“My… what?”

Tobias watched as the two demons shared a private smile. Or, what would have been a private smile if Tobias hadn’t been able to see inside their heads. Shindae was feeling smug, faintly jealous as a peek of lust rose through his general demeanour, and Sitka was openly imagining what Tobias looked like naked.

“Stop that!”

Sitka laughed, then ducked behind his friend to escape Tobias’s glare.

“So Kiorl wasn’t having a temporary break with sanity. You are an empath.”

_Zai sure knows how to pick ‘em. I wonder what his secret is?_

Tobias stared back at the lava covered demon, as he felt Shindae’s thoughts taking on a clearer shape.

_You can hear me?_

Tobias didn’t react.

_Ohhh… you are good. How long have you been hiding this secret, boy?_

“I said not to call me that!” Tobias snapped, realising he’d given himself away too late. “Shit.”

Shindae smiled, and Sitka shrugged, his curling horns touching his shoulders.

“In the house, it’s not such a big deal. We know, and we don’t really talk about it. Everywhere else, being an empath is not looked on very favourably.”

“Though Nassau will know about you already,” Shindae added. “Heck, he probably knew you were here the moment you arrived.”

“The fact that the Prince is an empath is also not well known. Most people think he can just see the future. Sometimes I think that’s why Zinkara Rumah is his favourite house, though he’s not been by in what feels like a hundred years, because he doesn’t need to hide who he is.” Sitka tilted his head when he frowned, and Tobias couldn’t help but be reminded of a friendly and inquisitive ram they’d owned when he was a child. “You’re going to have to work on your shielding though. I doubt you want to be privy to all the things the rest of us feel all the time. There are some things that shouldn’t be shared.”

“Like Inai’s leftovers.” Shindae quipped.

Tobias’s stomach grumbled loudly again as he transferred his omelette to a thick slab of smooth wood which would serve perfectly well as a plate, he didn’t eat it and stared at the dirty pans instead.

“Oh, don’t worry about those. Just put them in the sink and the house will do them.”

“What?”

Shindae came around the long bar, and took the pan, bowl, and utensils from Tobias’s unresisting hands.

“Zinkara Rumah looks after us well. Eat your food.”

“Good thing too, or this place would be awful.” Sitka grinned. He was still watching Tobias’s plate with an eager expression. “So you do a lot of this foodie thing?”

“I was a cook, before...”

“Before Zai came and whisked you off your feet?”

_Before a demon came to kill you, broke you, hurt you, raped you, tortured you…_

_I don’t want to think about that._

_And you know he’s going to come back from wherever he’s gone and do it all over again._

_Shut up!_

Tobias pushed the plate across the counter at the horned demon.

“I’m not hungry.”

Tobias turned on his heel, stuffed his hands into the pockets of his stiff trousers, and stalked off back to the narrow stairway he’d come down on. Now he followed it all the way up, past the long corridor from which he could access Zai’s bedroom – _it’s supposed to be our room now, dammit_ – and into a tight spiral without handholds which opened out onto what he instantly knew was the roof of the house. The campfire stars seemed so close that he could reach out and touch them, but the view of the land fell away much more sharply than the scale of the house from the outside had suggested. Tobias walked to the unprotected edge of the sleek black roof and stood looking out over the bowl of the valley, his attention drawn to the sprawling mass of the Palace in the centre of Hell.

“If you jump, you’ll still die.”

Kiorl’s voice made Tobias flinch violently, and he stepped back from the edge before spinning around, wondering if he could flee in time.

“You’re not immortal. Just in case you were wondering.” The big black panther lounged on a red velvet chaise with gold trim which had clearly seen better days. “Zai would be rather upset if you died, I think.”

“But you’re happy to try and kill me?”

The panther’s blue eyes narrowed to evil slits, and his ears twisted backwards in a clear sign of displeasure.

“I overreacted. I won’t touch you, but you’d best learn to stay out of my head.” Kiorl sighed in exasperation, clearly trying not to be intimidating. It was not a skill he was very good at. “Come away from the edge, would you Tobias? I don’t want to have to tell Zai I watched his mate jump to his death.”

_Sitka called Zai that too. What are they on about?_

“Mate?” he queried softly, stepping towards the rough circle of mismatched old furniture.

“He wouldn’t have collared you if you were just a toy. Bold move on his part, and potentially stupid. Time will tell.”

Tobias received a sense of intense longing from the feline demon, a deep loss and isolation that he could barely grasp, but as Kiorl looked directly at him, Tobias managed to step back without using his feet, and extract himself from Kiorl’s mind.

“The boys are right, by the way. Whatever you cooked smelt great.”

“I….”

_I’m never going to get to finish my training. I’ll never learn a new recipe again. I’ll have to make the same food forever, and I never got a chance to try that sweet pastry I tasted last summer._

“You don’t talk a lot, do you?” _Silent and brooding, you the two of you will get along just fine._

Tobias didn’t like to think of the trouble that listening in on Kiorl’s inner thoughts might get him in, so he sat down on the seat farthest from the demon and asked the question which had been preying most on his mind.

“Why did Zai bring me here?”

“Let me be clear; I’m not an empath. And trying to work out why anyone does what your mate has done is a waste of my time. Why would he want to be with a human? Beats me, but handful of demons all over the Inner Circle have tried mated life at some point or other – some far more successfully than others, mind you – so I can see that it made sense to him.

“You’re an empath, which is rare. He’s an empath and demon, which is rarer. And he’s a twisted fucker, which you must be a little bit too.”_ He looks so sodding normal though, even for a human. _“So obviously Zai’s decided you’re more fun alive than dead, and he’s brought you home to keep playing.”

“You said I wasn’t a toy.”

“Not _just _a toy. No fleeting mortal soul can ever be anything but an interesting and temporary diversion for an immortal. But like I said, some are more successful than others.”

Tobias didn’t want to ask the question, and he hadn’t finished speaking before Kiorl’s mind began answering him.

The mates of demons who didn’t make it faded like sun-bleached paintwork, peeling from the side of an old barn. Shambling and unprotected, they died with no one to mourn or miss them. Tobias shuddered away from the image, and wrapped his arms around himself as he realised how cold he’d suddenly become despite the hot breeze that wafted over the rooftop.

“And no one has asked Nassau for his gift in many, many years. No one dares. Not since Mattias.” And there was the sense of loneliness again, longing for the past which had rolled away like an ocean never to return, a sorrow so deep that Tobias could only sense it as an all encompassing miasma of sadness.

“Was he very special to you?” Tobias asked in the softest tone he could manage.

“We never got on. I found him irritating, but he loved Nassau, and Nassau adored him with every fibre of his being. He’s not been the same since.”

Tobias stared at the demon, then blinked, and twisted round to look at the Palace once again. The emotions he’d been feeling weren’t Kiorl’s, but belonged to someone else, someone who wasn’t even there. Tobias couldn’t imagine how much pain someone must be in to broadcast their feelings out over such an enormous distance. He shivered involuntarily.

“You can ask Zai yourself what he intends to do with you. He’s on his way.” Kiorl gestured to the path Tobias had arrived on, and the fast moving grey shape which swarmed along it. “I suspect he got his request for leave accepted too. You’d best go.”

He couldn’t think of anything useful to say to the powerful demon, so Tobias just nodded tightly, crossed to the door which lead to the stairs, and fled silently. He didn’t even know if he wanted to see Zai, but the demon was at least familiar if not safe, and Tobias needed something to be familiar.

He paused at the foot of the stairs, unsure where Zai would be, and heard the rich, complex voice of the demon from below. Tobias turned sharply to descend the stairs and smacked directly into a hard, cool slab of a person. He staggered back, blinking at the sight of green-toned scales, and stared up at the half-snake as his mind was suddenly filled with a hissing, slithering, twisted hunger which made him want to scream. He stepped back, tripped on the stair behind him, and was caught by the naga’s thick tail. He fought instinctively, but the snake coiled around his thighs tightly.

“Who are you?” the demon hissed.

Tobias quivered in terror at the sheer size of the snake-man who towered over him, and squeezed like a fist. He could feel the flavour of the naga’s mind – a slippery, vicious thing full of latent violence and the ability to lull his victims into a false sense of security.

“What are you doing here?”

_Zai!_

Tobias wished he still had hold of the knife from the kitchen though he had no idea if it would even penetrate the naga’s thick scales. He wished he hadn’t stopped, hadn’t tripped, hadn’t been alone along enough to leave himself vulnerable.

_ZAI!_

Tobias felt Zai’s presence just at the same moment as he remembered about the Chain of Possession he wore, and what Zai said it could do. The naga coiled his body in order to bring Tobias close to his face, and the moment he laid his huge hand on Tobias’s neck and shoulder, Tobias felt the force spring from the necklace like a thrown punch. And then Zai was there, a blurr of fur and leather streaking across his vision as he was dropped. Tobias didn’t see the scuffle, but by the time he was back on his feet, it was over, and Zai had the naga flat on the floor, his massive tail pinned by Zai’s claws as the horned demon snarled.

“You fucking reprehensible little upstart. You think you can lay hands on someone I am protecting without consequence?” Zai’s growl made Tobias shiver, even though he knew that all of the demon’s anger was centred very firmly on the naga. “Do not forget that you are allowed here only by the grace of those more powerful than you, Inai.”

“I wasn’t gonna...”

“DO NOT LIE TO ME!” Tobias winced as he heard and crunch of one of the naga’s bones snapping under Zai’s boot. “Have you learnt nothing in the last three decades, you miserable shit?”

“I am sorry, y’sire.” Inai’s words were laden with intense regret, and Tobias knew that for all his predatory, twisted hunger, the naga was truly sorry. He reached out and touched gingerly at Zai’s flinty sharpness.

_Zai, don’t hurt him any more. He’s plenty sorry._

“Apologize to Tobias.”

Inai clearly didn’t answer quick enough, and hissed sharply between his teeth as Zai crunched down with his boot on the already broken bone in his tail.

“Sorry! I’m sorry!”

“Slither away Inai. I catch you looking at my mate again and I’ll eat your eyes.”

Tobias waited, breathing hard, until he and Zai were alone in the long corridor once more. The demon turned to smile at him, and Tobias shook with happy relief.

_You’re happy to see him?_

_He saved me._

_He tortured you! Oh, I give up!_

“You didn’t have to do that. I mean, you didn’t need to hurt him so badly.”

“Yeah I did. Inai’s top of the pecking order of his clique, and snakes gossip worse than anyone. Word’ll get around, and no one’s gonna even think about overstepping the mark and touching you again.”

Tobias frowned.

“Did you really have to threaten to eat his eyes?” The mental image repulsed him, and Tobias shivered as Zai came close.

“Sure. Inai’s a hypnotist, that’d come in handy. If you kill another demon, you absorb their power. But if you want their abilities, you have to eat them.” Zai grinned in an evil manner, and Tobias knew he had to ask.

“You ever killed another demon?” The inside of Zai’s mind flooded with images in response. “I mean, someone who weren’t ordered to kill?”

There was a clear snap of regret and shame, and Zai snarled quickly as he exhaled.

“Yes.”

Tobias was sensible enough not to press for more detail. He fought silently in his head with his desire to touch the demon, and realised too late that Zai could feel everything. Simultaneously he tried to lean into and flinch away from Zai’s arm around his shoulders, and then he sensed the deep relief the demon felt at his company, and Tobias collapsed against him.

“Z-Z-Zai….”

“Hey, oh Sweetling. What happened while I was gone? I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left, I should have been back sooner. The guys are nice once you get to know them.”

Tobias’s stomach interrupted them by rumbling once more.

“Did you eat anything?”

_I burnt one omelette and gave the other to Sitka._

“Do you want to eat first, or look at your new wardrobe?”

“My… What?”

“C’mon.” Zai took his hand and dragged him along the corridor, past half a dozen doors which looked the same, and into their room. It took Tobias a moment to remember where he was, and then he saw the image of himself sleeping in the big dish-shaped bed, seen through Zai’s eyes, coloured with some soft texture he couldn’t make out. “You like the clothes?”

“Yes. Thank you?” Tobias frowned. Zai was fiddling with a pouch at his waist, and his mind was an incoherent bubble of excitement. “Zai, what have you done?”

“I borrowed the Bag of Holding from Sitka. He’s got the only one ever found, lucky sod, and Nassau let him keep it. It’s about the most useful thing in the ‘verse. I went to Stores and picked up everything I figured you might want. I mean, if you don’t like it, I can take it back...” Zai began tripping over his own words as he opened the Bag, and began to pull out things which couldn’t have possibly fitted inside the tiny space.

Tobias stared in shock, and blinked, but even more interesting than the magic apparitions, were the visions from the inside of Zai’s head. He’d spent the day wandering through the biggest, most crowded room of stuff Tobias had even seen, touching everything, choosing certain objects, and thinking about him the entire time. When he focused again, their room looked subtly different: there was now a plain but very solid chest of drawers next to the wardrobe, and Tobias opened a drawer to find it filled with clothes – most of which were of the sorts he recognised but had never been wealthy enough to own. Thick knitted jumpers, shirts woven of fine cotton and silks, heavy well-tailored trousers, more socks than he could count, several pairs of the blue jeans he currently wore, and dozens of other things besides.

_Please, dear gods, I really hope he likes it._

“This is all for me?”

“Yes.” Zai’s voice was heavy and meaningful. “This is your home too. I want you to feel….” _Like you belong here. I want to hope that you could learn to like it here, with me. That I won’t always be a monster to you._

“Zai….”

The demon covered the softness of the moment by glancing away, and busying himself once more with the Bag of Holding. He withdrew an oil cloth roll about as long as Tobias’s arm.

“I got you this too. Scavenger friend of mine went and picked it up on special order for me. I thought you’d like it.” Zai grinned mischievously. “After all, you’re the one who knows how to use knives.”

Frowning, Tobias took the heavy package, picked apart the knotted strap, and unrolled it in the bed. Held in separate stitched leather sleeves, were a dozen knives each with different blades, all handled with wood or smoothed and carved antler. The longest measured from Tobias’s elbow to his wrist with a bulbous shaped tip, and a cutting edge that looked sharper than Zai’s fangs. Tobias took the littlest knife with a sharp point and a slightly convex blade and weighed it in his hand. It was warm, comfortable, and already he remembered the scent of tart fresh apples, standing in the kitchen with the wooden bucket of windfalls, peeling the fruit ready for the moist, spicy cake his mother had made for special occasions.

“You’re not scared I’ll stab you in your sleep?”

“No.”

And he wasn’t. Tobias saw inside Zai’s head, and the demon was absolutely certain that his answer was true and that Tobias wouldn’t try and hurt him.

_But he’s going to hurt you, you can see him thinking about it…. And you’re going to let him, you sick fuck. _Tobias clenched the knife hard in his fist until his knuckles went white and his arm shook with the effort. _Maybe the Pastor was right about you all along. You are a freak._

“I’m going to go make dinner.” Tobias announced to no one in particular, scooped up the knife roll, and stalked down the stairs.

_And hopefully Zai will show me back to our room later because I still can’t remember which door it is._

Tobias cooked without thinking about it. He chose his ingredients by scent and texture, matching them up in his mind to the things they seemed most familiar with, finding substitutes for butter and chives, and vegetables which – whilst he wasn’t sure what they were – were certainly edible tubers and therefore could take the place of potatoes, even though they were bright purple. He pulled pans and glazed stoneware dishes from cupboards, then emptied them and began to rearrange the set-up to his own liking. From what Shindae had said, no one else cooked, and Tobias decided that if he was going to spend the rest of his life here, then the cutlery was going to reside in a more accessible drawer. There was one moment of surprise, as he washed dirt from the not-potatoes, as he realised the dirty pans from earlier had vanished, and after a short search were revealed to have been cleaned, dried, and hung back on the hooks where he had found them. The kitchen began to fill with the rich scents of Tobias’s cooking, the fire burning gently below the huge blackened saucepan, and Tobias began to listen with his mind to the conversation he could hear from the room across from the kitchen. He couldn’t make out the words that were said, but snatches of thoughts came to him, along with the emotions of their owners.

_For someone who says he thinks he's in love, he seems miserable._ That was Shindae’s normally jovial mind, and he seemed softly confused and worried for his friend.

_Haven’t I always maintained that mating with humans was a bad idea?_ Kiorl’s smug self-satisfied tones made Tobias shiver and quickly turn his attention somewhere else.

Zai snarled defensively, and Tobias knew the black panther must have said something similar out loud.

_He was my choice!_

_Was he?_ Zai’s inner voice muttered uneasily. _You just followed the Northern Wind and picked the first pretty thing that crossed your path in the dark. And you were desperate for something to change. Do you love him? _

_How could I even know if I did?_

There was a flash of anger from the grey demon, then an answering snap from Kiorl, and Tobias felt fear sweep briefly through the other three demons as the argument rose and was settled within moments.

Zai, audibly disgruntled, said something gracious to Kiorl, and Tobias felt the demon’s pang of regret as though his heart had been struck. Zai was missing those nights they’d spent in Old Man Riley’s house, because they’d been alone, and unjudged by anyone except each other, and suddenly Tobias realised that bringing him here was forcing Zai to defend himself in ways he hadn’t ever considered.

_It’s costing him to be with me._

_To be with you? What the fuck does that even mean?_

Tobias shook his head, because he had no answers.

_I never used to swear this much before. _

_Indeed._

_That was a good omelette. _Sitka, recovered from Zai and Kiorl’s fight, was back to thinking with his stomach._ I wonder if I ask nicely, will he make me another one? I can’t remember the last time the house smelt this good._

Tobias reached out to the slippery, slithering mind of the naga, and found to his surprise that Inai was still nursing his bruised ego. There were no thoughts of vengeance though, and Tobias relaxed, lifted the lid from the hanging saucepan to check the dinner, placed enough shallow, carved wooden bowls on the long counter to serve them all with, and walked from the kitchen into the big sitting room opposite.

The one thing his empathic skills hadn’t allowed him to do, was see how the demons were arranged in the room, and with the crashing tempers, he had expected to find them on their feet, visibly tense and stressed, and therefore it was a bit of a shock to find the five demons arranged around the room on a variety of over-stuffed couches and easy chairs, looking as though there was nothing more stressful happening than simple conversation about the weather. Sitka and Shindae even had part of a deck of very strange cards arranged on the cushions between them. Tobias felt suddenly conscious of the fact he had flour down his front as five sets of inhuman eyes turned to look at him.

_Zai is clearly more powerful than the everyday monster. You’re mated to a powerful demon – whatever that means – act like it!_

Tobias glared at Inai, then smiled at the general assembly.

“Dinner is served.” He half turned, then snapped over his shoulder. “And you all have to use cutlery.”

To his total lack of surprise, Sitka was first to be seated, knife and fork eagerly grasped in either hand, smiling in the same endearingly charming way Tobias’s little sister did when she wanted something.

_Except that he’s a demon with horns and eyes liked polished darkness… _ Tobias felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach, so he turned back to the fire, and began ladling out generous portions of thick meaty stew with fat and crispy dumplings.

“Thank you, Tobias.” Zai touched his fingers as he took the bowl he’d been offered, and Tobias knew it was a deliberate contact. Zai wanted to know how he felt, cared about how he felt, and Tobias couldn’t help the rush of gratitude that swept through him.

“You’re welcome. Eat.” He turned to the big green scaled Naga, who had coiled his lower body so that he was sitting on a platform of his own anatomy, but hadn’t reached for a bowl. “Eat.”

“I don’t usually-.”

Tobias’s sudden snarl was as vicious as Zai’s, and the naga took up the bowl and the fork quickly, ducking his head in apology.

_Fuck, he’s sexy when he’s mad._

Tobias glared at his ash-furred companion, then served himself out a portion of stew, and walked around the bar to eat with the other demons of the house.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which both Zai and Tobias feel crap about basically everything

Empathy was a double edged sword.

_A sword would fucking hurt less! And it would be over sooner._

Tobias knew, because he could feel everything Zai felt, just what the demon was going to do moments before he did it. It wasn’t enough time for him to move away before his shoulder was torn into meaty shreds, but it was enough for the memory of being in pain to usher in real pain so that Tobias was sure his injuries hurt more because he knew they were coming. He screamed, his whole body tense as he hugged the thick pillow to his upper chest, the fabric already spotted with his blood, and Tobias buried his face and fought so hard to keep from crying out again that he nearly dislocated his jaw.

Zai’s snarling was accompanied by a silently litany of sweetness and adoration which bounced around Tobias’s head, and made him feel infinitely worse, because for split seconds he found himself believing the demon’s endearments. But the demon’s words were hollow, there was no meaning there, no emotion, and Tobias almost missed the way everything the demon used to say to him was banked in equal parts lust and hunger.

Tobias whimpered as Zai reached underneath him, and wrapped soft fingers around the hardness between his legs. Pleasure he didn’t want, his own pleasure, snapped up his body like lightning, and Tobias screwed his eyes shut and tried to imagine that he wasn’t allowing this to happen to him yet again.

_Every night, just the same._

_Not the same, _Tobias growled at himself,_ sometimes he uses his teeth_.

“AHHH!”

_You spoke too soon again._

Tobias tried not to visualise the flesh that would now be hanging from his back, or the long gashes in his shoulder, or the twist and coil of Zai’s long tail wrapped around his thigh, but he couldn’t not, because Zai was looking at him, and Tobias saw everything through the mirror of the demon’s desire to see him in pain. Every bloody score fed Zai’s pleasure, especially the sight of Tobias’s pale body being speared and opened by the dark length of Zai’s cock, and that coil of pleasure grew and glowed with every thrust and juddering breath Tobias could draw with a lung he thought might be punctured, until it poured into Tobias as well, twisting all his fear into warm gratification, his pain into bliss, his hurt into ecstasy. Tobias came into Zai’s hand with a moan, then practically purred as Zai flooded his insides with heat. They collapsed into the mess they’d made, once again, of their bed and Zai instantly fell to licking and healing the worst of Tobias’s wounds so that the young man wouldn’t risk death in the afterglow of their orgasms. Tobias let himself be worked over, and simply wrapped his arms around a pillow he hadn’t bled all over and cried without tears.

“Tobias?” Zai paused, his rough tongue ceasing to lap at the long scores in Tobias’s shoulder._ My Sweetling, what’s wrong?_

_You just let a demon fuck you and tear your flesh with his teeth. How’s that for starters?_

“Nothing.”

Zai knew he was lying, and the fact that he cared what the demon thought made him more unhappy than any of the shame and repulsion he felt at what he’d allowed to be done to his body. The demon finished healing him, and sat back on his heels with a frown.

“Talk to me Tobias.”

“I’m tired.”

Tobias reached with his free hand and dragged the furs up over himself. As if knowing his desire to be left alone, the glowing alcoves in the room dimmed to almost nothing, and left Zai sitting in the darkness feeling miserable. Nothing came from the young man but a flinty hardness Zai couldn’t penetrate, so the ash-furred demon rose, and slunk silently from the room.

Shindae was sat, cross legged, in front of the enormous fireplace in the den, his lava eyes mesmerized by the dancing flames, the magma of his body stimulated and simulating the motion as the demon smiled to himself.

“Trouble in paradise?”

Zai grunted as he threw himself into a slightly dilapidated couch.

“You’re no empath, Shindae.”

“And I don’t need to be one. It’s the middle of the night an you’re coming downstairs having just had sex and covered in Tobias’s blood.” Shindae turned to him and rubbed the side of his nose conspiratorially. “You forget others of us have skills too. So either you killed Tobias without meaning to, or His Frigid Majesty finally threw you out of bed.”

“Do not call him that.” Zai snarled, eyes blazing momentarily before the truth of what Shindae was saying hit him like a hammer to the ribcage. “Why the fuck are you still up, anyways?”

“Just came back from Upstairs, and don’t change the subject.” Shindae casual mirth was covered by a layer of concern. “He still doesn’t like it here, does he?”

“Oh, he likes it here just fine.” _He just hates me._ “He loves the kitchen, and you and Sitka have been keeping it extra well stocked. Trust me, he’s noticed.”

“Zai… I don’t care what Kiorl says: secrets are bad for you. C’mon, spill.”

Zai growled indistinctly and sighed heavily.

“We’re just too different.”

Shindae turned to him and rolled his eyes.

“You melodramatic bastard. You’re an empath, so’s he. If the two of you can’t make a relationship work, then fuck knows how any other creature in the ‘verse ever manages.” The lava-demon rose and shook oxidisation from his skin in a shower of black flakes. “I got him something while I was upstairs. Seemed like something he might enjoy.” He offered Zai a thick book of fine paper, full of images of what Zai knew was food, along with the instructions to produce the recipes.

“You give it to him.” Zai handed it back. “He’ll like you better.”_ He likes Shindae and Sitka more than he likes me already. Fuck, but I’m glad I haven’t caught him fantasizing about them instead. I’m not sure I could bear it._

“You’d give him up, just like that?” Shindae’s tone was full of surprise and disbelief.

“No! Yes… fuck! I don’t know! I just want him to be happy.”

_You should have thought of that before you dragged him into another dimension._

Zai hung his head and wrapped his tail around himself tightly.

“Maybe Kiorl is right. Maybe we’re not supposed to try and mate with humans.”

“You don’t believe that.” Shindae laid the book on his lap. “Something else I don’t need to be an empath to figure out. Just… maybe try and do things his way for a bit. See where that gets you?”

Zai stared at the embers of the fire for a long time after his friend had gone. Wherever he might end up by trying to play along to Tobias’s emotions, it had to be better than spending the night on a sofa that made his spine ache.

*

The tenday he’d been gifted away from his duties in order to settle his mate into the house was long over, and Zai felt guilty at the sensation of relief he’d experienced when he’d gone to the Enforcement Office and collected a portal token to take him Upstairs. There’d been a tablet with it, and Zai read as he walked towards the West Portal. Someone had captured more salamanders – which was good, because the scaly bastards bred like rabbits – but then they’d let them go on a stopover world, and now the fiery lizards had become something of a nuisance. Zai scowled, and wished he had time to go back to the house and drag Shindae out with him, even though he was only a scavenger. It was always useful to have someone flame-bound on any mission involving dragons.

_Not that I’m eager to get back to the house. It’s easier to forget that I’ve ruined my life when I’m not there._

He’d left the book Shindae had given him outside their bedroom door where Tobias would see it, and one touch to the smooth wooden surface had transmitted to him a ball of rolling pain, fury, and disgust that had made him want to be sick. Tobias was spiky and full of emotions Zai didn’t understand the source of, so he’d left without saying anything.

Zai didn’t know anyone who’d mated. Demons from other houses who he recognised perhaps enough to nod to, but they’d all been partnered for a long time, he doubted any of them, or their mates, could give him any advice.

_And I’d rather be run through with one of Shindae’s swords than ask the Prince for help. The last thing I want to do is remind him of what he lost. No one needs another collection of weather events like the last lot._ Zai flicked his tail. _I wonder if that world has recovered from it’s sudden ice age yet?_

“Good morning, Zai.”

“Is it?” Zai replied without looking up from his tablet.

“Sir?”

“Sorry. Good morning Graccas.” Zai smiled at the minotaur who was standing on guard duty again. He could feel the shape of the question the huge bovine wanted to ask him, so he countered with one of his own first. “Do you like being a guard? Doesn’t it get boring?”

“No sir. It’s not as glamorous as what you do, or some of the scavengers. Getting to travel all over the ‘verse, but it has its points.”

“Does it?”

“Oh yes. Lots of time to think, getting to meet all sorts of demons from the Circle as they go here and there. We always get the gossip first.” As Graccas spoke, Zai could feel his fear of the doorway he stood next to, and he knew that the minotaur was terrified of getting lost in The Way. “And it’s much better than patrol. Patrol is so boring – as though anything could get through the fire mountains.”

Zai took a long glance at the huge wall of flames which rose in the distance and encircled the place he called home.

“Oh, it’s possible.” Zai remembered the last time something had broken through the barrier which secluded the Inner Circle from the rest of Hell. “I hope you never see it come to pass again.”

“How is your new mate? No one’s seen him around yet.”

“Fine, thank you Graccas.” The advantage of being one of the only three empaths in Hell, was that Zai could lie to anyone else as easily as breathing. He handed his token over to the minotaur, who swapped it automatically for a little bone chit. “Would you dial me up, please?”

With surprisingly nimble, hoof tipped fingers, the minotaur span the concentric rings of the dial, aligning symbols and touching others so that they glowed to match the token he’d been handed. The huge arched doorway, a cut out in the fabric of the universe, rippled suddenly, and then glittered with a billion stars.

“Have a good day sir.” Graccas said crisply, and Zai stepped into The Way.

There were hundreds of legends about the salamanders, about where they’d come from, how they’d got out and spread across so many worlds like a parasitic plague, how their evolution had suddenly exploded until many worlds suddenly found themselves at the mercy of giant lizards the size of cathedrals who could fly and breathe fire. Being a resident of Zinkara Rumah, and being an empath, Zai knew more truth about them than most, and as he stepped out into the wasteland rubble of what had until recently been a functional city, he could hardly believe that Kiorl had been at least partially responsible for the epidemic of fucking huge fiery lizards.

_And oh look, there’s one now._

Zai cracked his tail like a whip, and went to work.

An hour or so later he stood on the head of a dead dragon and pinned the idiot responsible to it’s scaly muzzle with one hand round the guy’s thorax.

“You idiot!”

“It was an accident!” The minor demon beneath him squirmed and refused to meet his eyes. Zai could feel the chill fear that practically drowned the waxy skinned demon, but the thin, sharp spike of intention alerted him, and Zai reached out with his tail, wrapped it around one of the demon’s three lower arms, and snapped it with a snarl.

“How many did you bring with you?” The whimpers of the demon angered him, and Zai clenched his claws into the flesh of his thorax. “How many?”

“Only two, they were both female!”

Zai roared in frustration and annoyance. One of the reasons that the salamanders had gotten out of control so quickly, and that their movement now was strictly prohibited, was that all salamanders were born female. Older females past egg laying age hibernated for a season, and emerged as males, ready to impregnate a whole host of their former peers.

“You’re too stupid to live. Did you see a clutch laid?”

“No.”

_People who lie to empaths should all just be taken off at the head._

“WHERE?”

“A-a-a beach south of here. Two tendays ago.”

_Fantastic._

“Stay here.” Zai commanded, then ensured that his instruction was followed by tearing one of the dead dragon's teeth out of it’s mouth, and driving it through the idiot demon’s lower abdomen. He probably wouldn’t bleed to death before Zai returned.

It took the rest of the day to find the nest, kill the vicious female guarding it, then destroy every single egg until nothing remained but shell shards and bloody viscera. He pushed the lot down past the high tide mark, hoped the ocean would do a good job of clean up, and returned to where he’d left the moron who’d thought smuggling salamanders across the ‘verse was a smart idea. He dragged his prisoner away, burnt the body of the dragon – dragons were only fireproof on the inside – and used the portal stone to visit one of his least favourite places.

The demon standing watch at the edge of the reaping fields looked sullen and annoyed, but snapped quickly to attention when Zai appeared. The empath felt his swift, hot desire for the portal stone, and stepped back, pushing his prisoner in between himself and the guard.

“Set him to work, for eternity or until he breaks completely. And never let him near a portal stone ever again.” Zai gave the waxen demon a kick and watched him tumble from the platform into the fields below where souls were being planted and crops harvested in rotation. He gripped his portal stone hard as it began to glow with the familiar fires of home.

“Sir?”

“What?”

The guard shook his feathers nervously.

“Do you think I’ll ever be able to return to the Inner Circle?”

Zai felt his abject desolation, broken only by the bright spark of hope, and paused.

“What was your crime?” he asked loftily.

The guard knew better than to lie to demons older, wiser, stronger, and more powerful than himself.

“I supported Nathaneal during the War.”

Zai shook his head as the portal stone glowed brightly in his hand.

“Then I’m guessing no. You’re lucky to be alive at all.” Supporters of Nassau’s brothers had not often been afforded the privilege of breathing. Zai shrugged, it didn’t matter to him that the demon felt bad. His side had lost, and rightly so. “You’d best learn to live without plumbing for awhile longer.” Then the bright, hot flame of the portal stone consumed him, and he vanished.

Zai hated the greasy feeling that always accompanied him after he’d been the reaping fields. There was misery and distress, but mostly resentment, annoyance, and petty squabbles. The perpetual wailing of the trapped souls, inaudible to most ears, but not Zai’s mind, gave him the chills every time, and Zai knew there was a good reason he wasn’t a Hunter. He hated to think of having to carry souls around with him every day, weighed down by their borrowed emotions.

Graccas had been replaced by a sandstone sphinx who took the chit from him with a silent nod of thanks, and watched him with intense curiosity as he walked away. But then, everything sphinxes did was intense. Zai had heard that they made alternately wonderful and terrible bedmates. From an intersection of the main path which branched down towards the Palace on his right, and back on a dogleg that would take him back to the office, Zai could see his house. His vision wasn’t any sharper than average, but already he could pick out the shape of Tobias on the rooftop.

_He’s gotta be standing right on the edge, or I wouldn’t be able to see him, it’s so high up._

Zai climbed the great ridge of basalt that skirted one side of the path, and used the shortcut to get onto a narrower track which lead quickly to the base of the steep side of the hill upon which Zinkara Rumah sat. By the time he had scaled the slope the figure of his mate had vanished, but Zai could feel him in their room. Even though his fur was dusty with the grit and grime of travel, Zai didn’t stop to wash, but went straight to the source of the loneliness he’d felt from halfway across the Circle. As the opened the door to their room, Zai was knocked back by the force of the relief which struck him from Tobias’s huddled figure.

_Oh heavens, please let him never leave me again._

Zai clenched his fists, digging his claws into his own palms briefly, and turned to shut the door behind him.

_He thought I left him. Actually left. Fuck._

“Hello Tobias. Did you find the book?”

“Yes. Thank you.”_ I can’t read it._ The young man’s disappointment was very sharp, and Zai heard the words as though he had spoken. “Did you have a good day?”

“It was… interesting, at least. Bloodier than I would have liked.”

Tobias regarded him with surprise.

“I missed you.”

“Oh.”

Zai took a deep breath, and brushed his hand down the front of his tunic nervously.

_Nervous? You’ve not been this nervous in over a decade. Get a grip. _

“Tobias?”

The young man turned to him, and Zai knew he was not misreading the hope in the young man’s dark eyes.

“May I kiss you?”

His mate said nothing, but nodded, and Zai crossed the room in a few quick strides, knelt with one knee on the stone edge of the bed, took Tobias’s chin without touching him with his claws, and kissed him. Tobias opened for him, through whether the overriding emotion was pleasure or duty, Zai couldn’t tell. Shindae had advised him to do things the way Tobias wanted, so when the young man began to lay back in the bed, Zai followed him down, and it was Tobias who took hold of his horns and kissed him again.

Zai obeyed every lead Tobias gave him, every groan and unspoken command in his head, mindful of his claws when he stripped Tobias from his clothes, soft with his hands as he stroked his chest and abdomen. When Tobias parted his legs, Zai was pleased but surprised, found the bottle of scented oil he’d stolen from Sitka, and touched the boy carefully. Tobias’s body vibrated with physical pleasure as Zai touched him, but his mind was a confused mess. No single emotion stayed long enough for Zai to read him properly, but even as Tobias’s knuckles clenched in the furs behind his head, his body tightening around Zai’s fingers with his release, Zai knew that not all was well with the human he’d brought home.

He knelt between Tobias’s thighs, removed his hand from the young man’s sinuous body, but made no move toward him. He was not expecting Tobias to scramble to his knees and slap him across the face.

“You’re bored of me, already?” He was crying, misery turning the air blue and grey between them. “I mean that little to you?”

Zai blinked in shock, too surprised to even growl.

“It was what you wanted.”

“But you didn’t feel anything!” Tobias wailed. His fists pummelled ineffectively at the hard planes of Zai’s chest. “What’s the point if you don’t feel anything!?”

Zai caught his wrist tightly, and felt the sudden spark at the expectation of pain. But Zai had lived with own emotions for a millennia, and he knew the feeling hadn’t been his.

“Tobias….”

“Get off me!”

And Tobias knew it too. Zai let go of his mate as the young man fled from the room, and arrived in the hallway in time to see the bathroom door slam.

Kiorl was standing at the end of the doorway, and the panther arched a dark eyebrow at his housemate.

“I do not want to know. But I know I will want a shower when I get back from the Palace. You’d better get him out of there at some point before then.”

Zai stood with his forehead against the bathroom door, and wondered how in Hell he was supposed to find Tobias through the storm of emotions his mate was lost in.

*

As soon as he slammed the door, Tobias span on his his heel, pressed his spine to the hard wood and glanced around wildly, looking for the way out.

_Except there isn’t one. You’ve got your back to the only door, and there’s a demon on the other side._

Tobias sprang away from the door, and moved swiftly to stand under the endless and warm waterfall. At the far end, where the water fell fastest and hardest, Tobias crouched with his head between his knees, letting the water pummel his body like the blows of so many small fists. He reached out to feel the gap where the water vanished, no wider than his hand, and snarled silently at himself for his stupidity. Through the curtain of water, he saw the deep square bathpool, and wondered what it would be like to drown.

_Maybe it won’t hurt. It’ll be just like falling asleep…._

_But it turns out you like pain._

_Shut up! _Tobias snapped. Unbidden, his mind replayed the way Zai had touched him, and pleasure of it should have been plenty, but had felt hollow and false to Tobias’s empathic senses. Zai had been concentrating, working hard to resist him, he’d felt that clear as the water which fell around him, and Tobias knew that the demon didn’t want him any longer.

_He’ll kill you. Get rid of you, take back his Chain, and go in search of another boy to waste his time with. I wonder how many there’ve been before you?_

Tobias could no longer pretend to himself that he wasn’t crying, and collapsed in a mess on the stone worn smooth by the ceaseless motion of the water.

_He said I was special._

_Maybe he can lie. He’s had a lot more practice at it than you have._

_Zai doesn’t like me any more._

_Well, you are awkward to live with. You want to win a demon’s favour? You’re sick._

Tobias glanced back at the bathpool again.

_Better to kill yourself than let him do it._

Tobias abandoned the waterfall and slid into the pool. It was deeper than he’d expected it to be, and he slid below the surface, panicked, yelped, swallowed half a lungful of water, and came up coughing, kicking his legs and scrambling for the smooth marble side.

_I can’t even drown properly. _ Tobias scowled. _I don’t want to die._

_Well that’s pathetic._

Tobias trod water for a few moments, then pushed away from the side of the bathpool, and used his hands to drive himself beneath the surface. He’d never been submerged and warm before, the water of the river ran chill as the mountains even in high summer, and Tobias closed his eyes in the sloshing underwater silence. It would be easy to slip away, to just stay under, not come up from breath, and let go into the quiet dark oblivion. Except…

_That I want to feel that bright, hot pleasure again. I’ve never felt anything so powerful and wonderful in my whole life. It makes being an empath worth it when I can feel Zai’s pleasure as he hurts me._

The young man surfaced suddenly, gasping for air.

_You like when he hurts you._

_No! No I don’t!_

_You’re a sick excuse for a person. Thank god your family aren’t hear to see you like this. They think you died as safe and boring and innocent as you were in life. No wonder the demon chose you, you’re disgusting._

Tobias sniffed, wanting to cry, but he was too angry with himself for tears to fall.

_But he’s bored of me already. What’s the point?_

Tobias bit his lip, clenching his fists hard, and hauled himself out of the water. As he reached for a towel, he felt the warm breath of another person on the back of his neck, but when he turned, there was no one there.

_He is not bored of you. _The voice was new, different, smooth like fine silks, and Tobias leant his mind towards it without considering what might happen. _And there is nothing wrong with you either, Tobias. Zai adores you, you just can’t feel it._

Tobias blinked at his reflection in the mirror.

_Who are you?_ But he already knew to whom the soft, fine voice belonged.

_I thought it was about time we met. And Kiorl tells me you’re quite the cook…._


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tobias teaches the Prince of Hell how to make bread.

Tobias did not much like the idea of meeting the Prince of Hell wearing nothing but a towel, but he was surprised to find, having rubbed his hair dry until it curled, a neat pile of his clothes, complete with the soft, fur-lined slippers he adored, waiting just outside the bathroom door. He couldn’t discern any emotion from them, so wasn’t sure who’d left them, but he got dressed just the same, and padded down the main, sweeping staircase in an open fronted shirt with laces and blue jeans.

The Prince of Hell was standing in the hall, talking with Zai as though he often dropped by for a casual conversation. Tobias reached out with his mind towards the figure shrouded by enormous bronze feathered wings, and faltered on the steps as Zai’s claws raked at his mind.

_Don’t touch him._

Tobias speared his demon companion with a glare, as though daring Zai to say something, but the ash-furred demon stared back at him and their eyes met, more or less, with a clang.

_Don’t. Please Tobias. I couldn’t bear to lose you now._

There was something in Zai’s tone which made Tobias pull back, a sweet, intoxicating softness, almost as good as the glowing rope of pleasure. He felt, suddenly, wanted. The young man descended the rest of the way without using his empathic abilities, and arrived to find the Prince turning to smile at him.

“Tobias… it is a pleasure to finally put a face to the name. I am Nassau.”

_His Highness, Lord Nassau Del Rae, Commander of the Seven Armies, Last Scion of Ifrit, Master of Storms, Heir and Prince of Hell._ Zai whispered in his mind.

_What a mouthful! _Nassau’s mental voice laughed like the chiming of delicate bells. _Just ‘Nassau’ will do._

“Zai has just been extolling the virtues to me of living with the greatest chef in Hell. Would you show me your kitchen, please?”

Just as Tobias realised that Zai was not following them, he felt a sharp pang of regret as he realised he’d missed out on a chance to touch the ash-furred demon, and an answering sensation that came from under his ribs told him Zai was missing him too.

“I promise I won’t keep you long.” Nassau said with a light smile. _Just long enough, _came his clear mental projection. Tobias knew that he needn’t have been an empath to hear the Prince in his head, and he realised that Nassau was powerful enough to speak directly into the mind of anyone he chose. “Well you’ve certainly left your mark on the place,” he commented as they entered the kitchen, and Tobias went directly behind the long counter to frown at the contents of the dry-larder.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Outside of the palace, there is no need for formalities.” _Not between us._ “I hoped when I built this place that someone might end up in it who knew about food. It’s a shame it took so long.”

Tobias gaped at him.

“_You _built this house?” The Prince of Hell looked barely old enough to have started courting, and though Tobias had realised long ago that appearances were deceiving, it was still hard to imagine the slender, pale skinned, auburn haired young man with the smooth, delicate hands, being responsible for a building hewn from a single piece of solid stone. Tobias tried not to trace the thin threads of living fire from his finger and up his arm. A forked blaze like echoed lightning marred one side of his jaw. He realised he was staring, and looked away quickly.

“Yes. A very long time ago. In the early days Father was happy to have all the demons living around him, like dogs.”

The mental image Nassau projected was as crisp and clear as Tobias’s reflection in the bathroom mirror: the Devil himself – glorious and terrifying in red and black – upon his throne in the centre of a pit of fire and things Tobias only barely recognised as demons. They were all kinds of shapes, but most slithered or crawled rather than walked. They laughed at his bidding, swarmed to touch him when he reached out to one of them, bickered and fought with each other when his attention drew elsewhere. As Tobias watched, he saw time pass all in a rush as the number of demons grew, and individual figures rose from the melee into creatures more like Zai and Sitka.

“After the First Rebellion, Hell was a rather empty place for a bit, until I begged father for a friend, and he made me Kiorl. Once we were older, and there were once again a lot of demons living in the palace, I decided that we should spread the population about a bit. Zinkara Rumah was the first house – though not many people know or remember that fact.”

Tobias blinked, reeling at the amount of information he’d been given, but something about the words ‘First Rebellion’ and the way Nassau’s mind had twisted and glowed when he said them, drew Tobias in. There was something important about that he needed to know. Important to him.

_A conversation for another day_, Nassau told him silently. Tobias shuddered as he realised that with Nassau, even more than with Zai, every thought and feeling he had was laid open and bare to the Prince.

“Tell me about Zai,” prompted the Prince.

Tobias frowned, took a large earthenware bowl and began to measure out flour by eye. It wasn’t quite like normal flour, but it rose well with the powdered yeast Sitka had been bringing him, and tasted basically the same as bread.

“Why?” _You know far more about him than I do._

_Sometimes having a conversation without speaking takes its toll_, came the Prince’s silent warning. “Use your voice. It’s good to talk.”

“Alright.”

Tobias began to mix warm water into his dough mixture, and because he couldn’t think of anything to say, began talking about food whilst he thought about everything else.

“The bread was the first thing I learnt to make at the Inn. Every day starts with bread, and my Father was really pleased when he realised we’d no longer have to spend precious pennies on loaves from the baker.” _I can’t remember the last conversation Zai and I actually had. Not one that didn’t end without me running away. I miss him, and there must be something wrong with me for that._

“I love making bread, kneading the dough is kind of therapeutic, and it gives me time to think before starting on prepping vegetables and stoking the fire ready for the lunch rush. Midday meal is popular at the Inn, was popular. Damn, I suppose it’s all there still. Carrying on without me.” _Zai took me from my world, from my life. And I’ll never learn to make the pastries we used to serve to noble guests, or finish the owner’s instruction on sauces, or make Forgotten Cookies. It’s not fair._

_Instead you get to live here, with a demon who doesn’t like you, waiting for him to kill you and dump your body somewhere. Unless he lets Inai eat you._

Tobias swore at himself, and glanced up from the mound of stretchy bread dough to find Nassau watching him intently, arms folded on the long counter.

_What did I do wrong?_

Nassau’s huge wings shivered, his feathers rustling softly, and his grey eyes, swirling gently like rain-laden clouds, were full of sorrow.

“Nothing, nothing at all. Zai chose you because you’re special, and because he was there, and so were you, and the time was right. The ‘verse conspired to bring you together – or the Gods did – because Zai reflects something in you that you need, and you certainly reflect something he needs.”

Tobias stepped back from the counter where the bread sat on the floury surface, beginning its slow but inexorable rise to spongy goodness, put his face in his hands and cried. Nassau was telling him the truth, every word an irrefutable fact, and that meant that whatever purpose he was supposed to fulfil by being Zai’s mate, he had failed, because the demon didn’t like him.

_Tobias._

The young man glanced up, and all of a sudden, though nothing in his vision had changed, he saw Nassau for what he really was. The patterns he’d seen which made up the world where they’d stepped through the portal, were suddenly everywhere, and standing before him, Nassau was bigger than the room, bigger than the house, bigger than campfire studded sky. His patterns were myriad grasping tendrils, furling and unfurling, touching everything in the world around them, absorbing information and emotion from every single soul in the realm. Somewhere it what Tobias could only think of as his centre, the patterns were denser, darker, and in there was a pain that had no end.

_All empaths are broken, Tobias. Every single one of us. When Zai thought you were amusing, interesting, sexy, you felt it all – even though you didn’t want to. Now he loves you, adores you, and you feel nothing. It’s not fair, but it is how you were made._

_Can you fix me?_ Tobias would have asked the question, but he couldn’t find his voice. There was nothing in him but the burning desire to feel the hot, bright pleasure he and Zai had found together again. Regardless of how much it cost him.

_It can be done. It is not easy. He is trying to make you happy, Tobias. But neither of you are talking to each other, and his efforts have made you both miserable. Learn to trust him._

Tobias remembered the way Zai had pulled him out of the fire of the portal, how he’d clung to the demon in the wake of his fear of Inai, the sweetness of Zai’s kiss as they’d stood under the waterfall and watched Tobias’s blood pouring from his body, feeling Zai’s pleasure flooding every corner of his mind. He wanted that feeling again.

_I promise, you will._

Nassau smiled, and Tobias reached out with his mind to thank the Prince of Hell, without considering Zai’s advice.

The pain in Nassau’s heart overwhelmed him. The image of a man with broad shoulders and ready smile, rough skin marred by the scars of many battles past, threw his head back and laughed before wrapping a skinny young man with ash-brown hair up in his arms. It was Nassau, and the man was his lover. Like a hammer to the heart, Tobias knew that the man in the vision was dead, that somehow Nassau had killed him trying to show him how much he was loved, and the pain had nearly destroyed him too.

A loneliness lived inside Nassau bigger than anything Tobias had ever felt, a deep and empty longing to feel the touch of the man he still loved. Tobias saw the stretch of centuries passing by him, all the time that Nassau had been alone, and it threatened to swallow him whole.

_Forever is a very long time. An eternity to spend alone and I would not wish another to suffer this fate._

Tobias quaked in the storm of the Prince’s despair, and suddenly he realised he couldn’t find his body, his own mind, and the little core that made up himself was being torn apart by the enormity of the mind he was trying to understand.

_Of all the ways to die…_

_I am NOT dying! ZAI!_

And there was the demon, the warm, familiar, twisted wash of his mind, and Tobias tried to grab onto the sensation.

_I’m here. Come back to me._

He couldn’t find his body, couldn’t feel the tears on his face or his feet in slippers standing in the kitchen. Couldn’t smell the soft yeasty scent of the rising bread, or the cold stone surface under his hands. Then pain speared up his arm, hot and bright as Zai’s acid yellow eyes in the black of night, and Tobias wrapped his mind around it.

_Find me. Feel my claws in your flesh, the blood staining your pale skin. Come back to me!_

Tobias could feel his body, the pain in his arm, and then the tendrils of Nassau’s mind were receding, losing their hold on him, and his vision swam as the patterns faded until Nassau stood, as normal as demon royalty could ever be imagined, smiling softly. Tobias turned and looked at his bloodied forearm, Tobias’s dark claws sunk into his flesh up to the first knuckle. He frowned.

_You just ruined my favourite shirt._

Before Zai could even finishing thinking his apology, Tobias flung his free arm around the demon’s neck and shoulder, and pulled himself as tight to Zai as he could.

There was no pause, no hesitation, and Zai crushed the young man against his chest, face buried in the curve of his neck, and inhaling his scent as Tobias did just the same.

_Please, don’t ever leave me like that again._

And Tobias saw Zai, standing in the passage outside their bedroom, dejected, lost, tears staining his soft fur, feeling wronged and bruised and like he wasn’t worthy.

“Oh, Zai…”

Nassau arched a perfect eyebrow and smiled.

“I told you the two of you should talk more. There’s only so much being an empath can tell you.”

“Thank you, Sire.”

The Prince shrugged, the movement magnified by his wings, and brushed the sentiment off like it was nothing.

“Tobias was teaching me how to make bread, do you think it might be ready to bake yet?”

By the time the other demons arrived, the kitchen was thick with the complex smells of baked and baking bread, roasting meat, and frying onions. Tobias stood behind the stove, an object he had come to love, still wearing the bloodied remains of his shirt, though his arm was healed, moving the translucent strands of caramelizing allium around in the hot fat. He glanced up to find Zai watching him, something deep and complicated in his eyes.

_He wants you._

Tobias smiled.

_He’s going to hurt you again._

_Yes._ Tobias blushed to remember standing in the kitchen whilst Zai lapped at the long cuts in his arm. Nassau hadn’t been embarrassed, but knowing the Prince could see Zai’s lustful intentions just as clearly as he could made Tobias almost ashamed.

_Nothing is ever really private in Hell,_ the Prince reminded softly._ I promise not to hunt through your memories._

_Thank you_. Tobias bit his lip, and aimed his question for the Prince. Zai wouldn’t be able to feel the specifics of the question, only that there had been one. _Am I sick, do you think? I like how we feel together, even though it’s wrong and even though it hurts._

_You never thought you’d say that, did you?_ Nassau smiled knowingly. _There are plenty of stranger kinks in the ‘verse. As long you and he are doing something together that you enjoy, then who’s business is it to say if it’s wrong?_

_But, even though he…?_

_Yes, even that. No one here would judge you. Especially not for that._

“Oh.” Tobias removed his frying pan from the heat, walked around the bar, and took Zai’s hand. “Come with me a moment?”

There was no one in the den, the wide mouthed fireplace was empty and cold, and Tobias pulled Zai back into a shadowy corner, and kissed him hard. The demon responded to him instantly, moulding against his body, opening him up with his tongue, and purring as Tobias ran his fingers through his short soft hair. They broke apart panting, and Zai grinned.

“What was that for, Sweetling?”

“I just wanted to kiss you.”

“Heck, you didn’t have to drag me in there for that. Just think how jealous Shindae would have been… oh.” Zai blinked, the brightness in his eyes dimming. “You don’t want them to know you like me?”

Tobias tempered Zai’s bitter disappointment with another kiss.

“No, that’s not it. I don’t want to make them jealous over something they can’t ever have.” He touched the chain at his neck and smiled. “I only belong to you, and no one else gets to see what we do together.”

“Privacy isn’t usually considered much of a big deal down here, Sweetling.”

“It will be now.” Tobias told him firmly. “Come on, let’s go have dinner.”

Zai grabbed his wrist as he moved away, tugging him back with a sharp gesture which made Tobias gasp, and the demon dug a claw into the centre of his palm as he cupped the weight of his crotch through his clothes.

“If I have to wait until we’re alone together, then it’s gotta be worth it,” he snarled. Tobias whimpered, suddenly aware of the pain, of the red lust that surrounded them, and the predatory look in Zai’s eyes. He knew, with empathic clarity, the demon was going to make him pay for denying him pleasure now, and Tobias knew it would be worth the pain for the pleasure that was to come. Zai growled low, and Tobias quivered with desire. Zai kissed his hand, and smiled. “I knew you were a quick learner.”

_You’re a freak,_ Tobias told himself.

_I’m in love with a demon, what did you expect?_

And that shut his inner voice up completely.

Tobias had gotten used to the way the house simply washed and tidied things whilst no one was looking, but that didn’t mean he allowed the demons he lived with to abandon their dishes wherever they wanted. Nassau sniggered as Tobias glowered at Shindae, then had to shut up quickly when he too was reminded to clear up after himself. Tobias stood in the kitchen and wiped down the counter, even though Zai had basically hoovered every breadcrumb and scrap of meat available, and listened to Nassau making his goodbyes. The Prince brushed his mind with a wash of gratitude, and Tobias smiled to himself. Having friends in high places could only be a good thing.

Zai tugged insistently at his mind, and Tobias rolled up his knives before taking the back stairs two at a time. Zai pushed him back through their bedroom door with his hands already stripping away his clothes, and as the backs of Tobias’s knees hit the edge of the bed, the young man remembered himself, and pulled Zai’s face away with a hand around one horn.

“Sweetling?”

“No. We have to talk.”

Zai whined unhappily.

“Sex can wait.” Tobias felt a quick, hot sensation deep in his stomach, and then an answering glow of lust and frustration from his lover. “You heard the Prince. We’ve not talked to each other. Now sit.”

_Fine_, Zai grumbled silently, and pulled his tabard off over his head without stopping to unhitch all his belts. _I’m not staying clothed though. Oh, sod it._

“Help me!” came the muffled voice as Zai’s clothes caught on his horns, the belts restricting the movement of his shoulders. Tobias giggled. “I’m so glad you find me funny.” _Just you wait, beautiful one, until I get my hands on you._

Tobias stripped out of his clothes, folded them neatly and stepped forward to wrap his arms around Zai’s bare waist. He heard the demon hiss in surprise at the contact, and felt the curiosity in Zai’s mind.

“You’re naked?”

Tobias glanced down at himself, and hoped Zai could feel the way he was trying to be comfortable with the fact he wasn’t wearing anything.

“You don’t have to be ashamed of being naked, Sweetling.”

“But I was always taught to be. Church every week and Sunday school too, remember?”

“Ugh. I hate that that guy has so much influence in your world.”

Tobias frowned.

_God is a real person?_

“Sure.” _And apparently he’s a proper bastard too._ “Now, are you gonna help me out of this mess?”

“You promise we’ll talk?”

Zai sent him an image of the two of them sat on the deep dish of furs, Tobias in his lap, and the young man smiled.

“How do you do that? Send images, I mean.” Tobias pushed the fabric of Zai’s tabard up over his chin, then stood on tiptoes to kiss his lover before freeing Zai from the rest of his clothes. The ash-furred demon wrapped him in both arms, hugging him hard, and Tobias felt the hard length of his erection along his thigh and abdomen.

_Remember, talking._

_I know. But you should know how you look, Sweetling. Never was there anyone more perfect than you._

Tobias blushed.

“To me, you could not be more beautiful. Come,” Zai scooped him up in his arms and carried him to the bed. “Let’s talk.”

Tobias spent a while arranging the furs and blankets around himself, only to have it all ruined when Zai sat behind him, pressing his body in close, and wrapping them both in the great cloak he’d been wearing when they’d first met. Tobias fingered the heavy cloth, and wondered if the object should have made him more scared.

_I was scared, that time, and the next, and afterwards for a while. But I’m not scared of you now._

_But you’re still scared of something?_

_Yes. _Tobias took a deep breath, aware of the silence in the room. “Me. I’m scared of myself.” He took Zai’s hand in both of his own, and pressed the pad of his thumbs into the centre of his palm. “Tell me about what happened earlier. Why didn’t you hurt me?”

Now it was Zai’s turn to project a sense of shame and discomfort.

“You hated it. Every time. Every time I touched you you flinched away, wondering when I’d hurt you again, praying that I wouldn’t. So I tried to do it your way, and you ran away crying!” Zai’s tone was tight and full of anger, but it was turned inward at himself. “It was one simple thing, and I couldn’t even do that right.”

Tobias frowned, and chewed his lower lip.

_But if you don’t hurt me, you don’t feel the same kind of pleasure, right?_

_Indeed. It’s the way I was made._

“So I didn’t feel it either. I mean, I felt the physical stuff, but it’s not the same.” _It’s not as good,_ he thought privately, hoping Zai wouldn’t sense that particular disappointment.

The demon stroked his chest and pressed his cheek to Tobias’s curls.

“The pleasure of the mind is so much better than that of the flesh – at least, it is to us. Everyone can do great things with their imaginations, but to people like Shindae and Sitka, flesh on flesh is the best it ever gets. We have access to more. Don’t feel bad about always wanting better.”

“But… why didn’t I feel anything? It was like you were just...” _Going through the motions. Like it didn’t matter that it was me. As though you didn’t care. _Tobias knew that Zai could hear him, but it still felt too awful to say aloud.

Zai shook his head, and Tobias felt him smile into his hair.

“You have any idea how much self control I had to use not to hurt you? How much I’m using now not to just pull you close and sheathe myself inside your perfect arse? How hard it is for me to sit here and hold you and not dig my claws into you?” _You don’t, because you’ve been exercising that same kind of self control all your life, haven’t you Sweetling? Not letting anyone know that you’re an empath, that you’re gay, that you know all their secrets. You don’t have to do that anymore. You’re safe._

Tobias shivered suddenly as Zai removed himself from their embrace, discarded the great cloak, and came to sit in front of him, cross-legged, his tail wrapped around his ankles as their knees touched.

“OK. I’ve never taught anyone else to do this. I mean, Nassau taught me, so, just imagine he’s teaching you. I guarantee he’d do a better job.” Zai shook his head sharply, and Tobias heard him mutter to himself sharply as a wave of red rose, then was quickly snatched back by Zai’s mind. “Focus.” _Idiot. Not now_. Zai smiled. “Remember how I taught you how to see where the world was thin, so we could use the portal stone? This is like that, only now, I want to to really look at yourself. All emotions have a flavour, and you should be able to tell mine from yours pretty easily by now.”

Tobias took a long, deep breath, and closed his eyes. He could see Zai in his inner vision, a dark soft shape, familiar yet strange, and he could taste his mind. Complex and rich like his voice, and full of a myriad of emotions, not all of them good. There was lust, and a desire for pain and blood; unsureness, a timidity which Tobias didn’t like much; a brush of sorrow, and a sprinkling of pity. Tobias opened his eyes, and looked at the demon.

_He says he’s holding himself back, but I don’t feel it._

_Then let go._

Tobias glanced down at himself, and fought against the blush which rose in his cheeks at the sight of his body, and his half-hard member. His body was marked with the ghosts of scars, wounds that Zai had made and healed, and the memories of working hard in the kitchen and the fields, and he didn’t know why Zai thought he was attractive.

_But you think Zai’s attractive, don’t you?_

_He’s a demon with fur and a tail._

_And does that make a difference?_

_It’s wrong._

_Because he’s practically an animal? He can hear you you know._

Tobias looked at his lover, but Zai still sat, hands resting on his knees, tail looped around his crossed ankles, his desire for Tobias evident between his thighs, his taught abdomen flexing in time with his measured breaths. Tobias exhaled deeply again, and stopped denying what he already knew.

_I love him. It doesn’t matter he’s a demon, I love him anyway._

_And?_

_And I don’t care if everyone thinks I’m a freak for it._

Tobias stared at Zai without using his eyes, and suddenly he saw it. As though clouds had lifted from his inner vision, he could see something wrapped around Zai’s lust, a double stranded rope of iron self-control, and something he couldn’t see, slippery and see-through as an icicle.

_Love. He’s using his love for me to hold himself back._

“Oh Zai….”

“Sweetling?”

Tobias knelt up, leant close, reached out and wrapped his fingers around Zai’s erection. The demon groaned. The young man offered his shoulder to his lover and smiled.

“You can let go now too.”

“You’re not scared anymore?”

Tobias purred as Zai’s claws raked down his side, tiny beads of blood tracking over his pale skin.

“No. There’s nothing left to be scared of. Not in here.”

_Blow, Northern wind. Blow._ Zai’s inner voice sang with delight as he sank his fangs into Tobias’s flesh. _Give me my Sweetling…_

Tobias screamed in pain, and it was good.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tobias learns new secrets, and gets given a very special feather.

Tobias traced the first letter of his name with the tip of one finger, and frowned softly. Zai was still in the bathroom, drying his fur and the tufted tip of his tail, but Tobias forgot he was standing in the hallway wearing nothing but a towel around his hips and the very obvious half-healed wounds of Zai’s claws across his chest and back. He held the side of his tongue between his teeth, and sounded out the letters softly as he read his own name. Then there was sinuous symbol he didn’t recognise, and then another three letters which were vaguely familiar, but the word eluded him.

“What does this say?”

Sitka, who Tobias knew had been keeping his jaw firmly shut to avoid being snapped at for staring lustfully at him, stepped forward and examined the words.

“Tobias and Zai. How come you guys get a plaque?”

“Nassau put it there.” Tobias could feel the soft, feathery warmth of the Prince through the carved letters, see his smile and the gentle roll of the storm in his eyes, momentarily unclouded by his ancient pain. “I belong here.”

“Ain’t nobody doubted that for a while now, Tobias.” Sitka said his name very deliberately, because Tobias could feel all of the other things the ram-horned demon wished to call him. Tobias turned to glare at him, and the demon looked exactly as though he’d been caught stealing bread from the communion platter at Sunday service. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s hard living with something you can’t have.”

Tobias blinked, then shook his head, because Sitka’s words had arrived with a blur of images, every single on of them clouded with raw lust, and the knowledge that, at some point, every single demon he lived with had been intimate with the others. Tobias shivered, then growled as Sitka imagined him without his towel.

“Get used to being told ‘no’ Sitka.”

The other demon held up his hands in a supplicating gesture.

“I meant no harm. I’m sorry.”

Tobias knew he was failing to hide his smug smile.

“If you don’t learn to stop thinking like that, I’ll be forced to stop cooking for you.”

“You wouldn’t….”

“I urge you not to try that theory, not if you intend on eating any time soon.”

“Yes Tobias. Sorry Tobias.” Sitka practically bowed himself out of the hallway, and vanished into his room.

Tobias didn’t need to turn around in order to see Zai’s proud smile, but he sighed softly as his lover came up behind him, smoothing his sleek furred hands around his chest.

“That was a thing of beauty, Sweetling. You make me very proud.”

“Have you really had sex with him?”

“Sitka? Oh yes, he can be very accommodating when the mood strikes.” Zai purred against his ear, but Tobias could feel the difference in his words and his thoughts. Zai’s light hearted casualness gave away to a deeper, hot sensation when he thought about Tobias instead. “Every now and then the boys,” he meant Sitka and Shindae, “bring something pretty back from Upstairs, and we have ourselves a little play. Eternity gets lonely without a some fun every now and then.”

_But it means nothing._ It wasn’t a question, and Zai hugged him hard, knowing he understood, at least a little.

_You mean everything. _ The demon assured him

“I hope you don’t ever expect me to join in one of these ‘fun’ sessions of yours?”

“No, my love.” _You would always be welcome, if you wanted. But no one would ask you, least of all me._

“Good. Look, Nassau gave us a present.”

“So he did.” _Can I give you one?_

“You’re insatiable.” Tobias reached out and stroked his hand down Zai’s long tail, feeling the deep, warm sense of satisfaction which emanated from his lover. “What are you planning?”

“I went Upstairs and brought you something.” Zai pulled him bodily through the newly labelled doorway with a broad smile. “I want to take you to the Palace.”

Tobias frowned, because Zai sounded excited, but his mind was full of stress, misery, and fire. He pushed himself up against the ash furred demon and Zai purred as Tobias explored his mind.

_I like having you in here with me._

_Hush. You’re making it hard to concentrate._

Tobias felt for the memory Zai was dancing around, reaching without using his hands, trying to capture the thought. Zai had taught him how to do it, almost accidentally, and Tobias enjoyed the feeling of being linked with his lover, even whilst Zai’s hands were exploring his body with soft movements.

A great hall, a room in the Palace no doubt. And Nassau, naked from the waist up, his wings glowing, his skin unmarked, smiled at the man Tobias recognised as Mattias. The Prince looked exactly like a man in love, and plucked a feather from one wing. He laughed breathlessly, brushed the feather over Mattias’s lips, and the broad-shouldered human said something Zai hadn’t heard at the time. Nassau kissed him, their passion obvious to everyone watching, and blew on the feather. And then there was screaming, a tornado of flames with Nassau in the centre, desperately clutching at the man he loved even as Mattias slipped away between his fingers.

Tobias pulled out of his lover’s mind just as the intense pain hit him. He was bleeding, Zai’s claws had reopened his shoulder, and Tobias knew why without asking.

“That was the last time Nassau used his gift, and the only time it ever went wrong. If I take you to the Palace, it’ll be a _big deal_, and you’ll have to look the part.”

The young man stared at the outfit on the bed.

“What is that?”

“A three piece suit. Height of modern fashion on the world I was on lately. Saw someone wearing one, it looked just the thing considering your dislike of traditional dress.”

_For the last time, a loin cloth does not count as clothing._

Zai laughed and licked the blood from his skin.

_Don’t tell the boys that, or they’ll start going around naked again. You like it?_

“Yes. Thank you Zai.”

“Anything for my Sweetling.”

Tobias kissed the demon, wrapped both arms around his neck, and smiled at the texture of Zai’s purr.

“I have to go cook.”

“Really?”

“Yes. The guys will be hungry soon, and Shindae said he was going to get me some whirring birds. Inai will like it, he can eat them whole.”

“Inai can eat anything whole,” Zai grumbled unhappily. _But, we could stay here and I could do really excellent things to you. Again._

_Remember what I said about the virtues of waiting?_ “Anyway, I’m still sore.”

By the time Tobias walked down to the kitchen to find Shindae’s promised gift of a dozen small, blue-grey feathered whirring birds waiting for him, he was no longer sore, but he was hiding his lust in his jeans. As it turned out, there were some very interesting places Zai could use his healing tongue that Tobias hadn’t previously been aware of.

He was stood at the sink, gutting and plucking the birds with quick, well practised movements, thanking the house silently as it disposed of the waste with quiet efficiency, so he wasn’t looking when Kiorl wandered in, and sat heavily at the counter on his favourite stool. There was the clink and scrape of things – bits of armour and weapons – being put down on the surface, and Tobias was about to turn and snap at the panther, when he heard the demon’s voice as clearly as though he’d been speaking.

_Well that was a fucking unsatisfying afternoon._ The thought was followed with a rush of emotion, and an image which burnt itself into Tobias’s unwilling mind just as the rest of their housemates came spilling through the door. Tobias whirled round, hand over his mouth. But his voice was three steps ahead of his self-control.

“You’ve been having sex with the Devil?!”

Sitka paused in the doorway, hand flung out to catch Shindae's arm.

“You know, I’m suddenly _not _hungry.”

Tobias stared at Kiorl as he realised what he’d just said, then ducked out of the panther’s line of sight, wishing he could become invisible. Kiorl snarled, a deep, bloodcurdling sound and Tobias knew the demon wanted to hurt him badly. And then Zai was standing over him, tail snapping with righteous anger, daring the panther to challenge him.

“Get out of my way!”

“No.” Zai’s eyes flared like the inside of the sun. “Don’t you dare touch him.”

“Keep a fucking leash on it then, Zai.” Kiorl spat.

Unwise as the action was, Tobias was suddenly on his feet, and flung the little thumb knife he’d been using at the panther. The point stuck into the leather vambrace Kiorl was still wearing, and he roared. Tobias hadn’t realised how quick a creature of Kiorl’s size could be, but the panther who smiled with feline grace moved with it as well, and in a blink he was over the counter, his fist holding Tobias up by the throat as his feet kicked in the air.

“I am a major demon of Hell, and you- you are just a worthless human pet. How dare you challenge me and expect to live?”

“KIORL!” Zai stood, eyes flashing with a mixture of anger and fear, and he grasped Tobias’s hand. The contact was sharp and sweet, and Tobias hoped that Zai could just pull him back into his safe embrace. But Kiorl’s ice blue eyes narrowed and he showed his teeth.

“He has no status here. He is your pet, Zai, and you should have trained him better.”

_Kiorl…._ The Prince’s voice, smooth, calm, soft, invaded all their minds at once, and Tobias would have cried in gratitude, except that he was struggling to breathe. _My great friend, let him go._

_He’s just a human._

_Not for long. Let him go. Or I will make you._

Kiorl snarled, snorted, and dropped Tobias. The young man landed in a heap on the floor, his ankle twisting underneath him as he collapsed. Kiorl pulled the knife from his armour and sent it skittering off across the floor.

“You try that again, and I will kill you.” He shivered unhappily. “You can fuck off too, Nas. Get out of my head.” He bright eyes fixed on Tobias once again. “You need to learn to control yourself better. I find you in my head again and no status or shiny jewellery will save you. Get out.”

Tobias blinked, the words he wanted to say at war with his self preservation. Eventually, pride won.

“I still have to cook.”

Kiorl barked a sharp snarl full of deep displeasure, gathered his things, and stalked off, his fur visibly prickling. After a long, tense moment, Sitka’s curly horns appeared around the doorway. He sighed, and stepped into the kitchen.

“Gods and Mountains, you’re both still alive. Fuck… honestly I wouldn’t have been surprised to find this place looking like an abattoir.” With his easy going swagger restored, Sitka sat himself down at the counter and grinned. “What’s for dinner?”

Tobias rolled his eyes, and smacked him with a tea towel.

*

Zai smoothed the fabric of the suit jacket over Tobias’s shoulders, and imagined ripping through it with his claws. Tobias turned and glared at him.

“Not now.”

“I didn’t realise quite how good you were gonna look in it, Sweetling.”

Tobias shivered._ Not helping! _He was nervous enough as it was, because in the middle of the night he’d sat up in their bed, sweating and shivering, and forced the low level glows to come on to try and soothe his shattered nerves. Standing on the roof didn’t count, and Tobias had realised he hadn’t been out in Hell since the day he’d first arrived. He had stayed in the house for more than whatever passed for a month by his reckoning, and the idea of going out into the Inner Circle of Hell scared him.

_It’s your home now, you idiot. You can’t spend the rest of your life being scared._

_And what if Zai gets into a fight over me?_

_He won’t. _

Tobias turned to look at his lover and bit his lip.

_He might._

“I can feel you thinking away in there Sweetling. What’s there to be scared of?”

_Everything._ Tobias took a deep breath, and tried to clear his mind. He couldn’t, because everywhere he and Zai touched, all he could feel was his lover’s excitement, his pride, his lust, and the now-familiar void of emotion where Tobias knew another empath would sense love.

“Nassau already likes you,” Zai spoke as he adjusted the open collar of the formal shirt he’d brought along with the suit to best show of the Chain of Possession, “and the Palace is a beautiful place. And Kiorl went Upstairs already.”

“He’s been avoiding me.” Tobias commented unhappily.

“Yes. And no.” _Mostly he’s avoiding me._ “I’m the second ranked demon in the house, after Kiorl. And probably the most powerful of all the minor demons in Hell. I’m certainly older than- never mind.” Whatever Zai had been about to say, he covered it well. “Kiorl is a very proud person: losing face, even privately, isn’t an option for him. A dozen demons of the Royal Court would love to usurp his position.” Zai smiled. “Come, my Sweetling. It is a very nice day in Hell, and I would like to walk with you.”

It reminded Tobias of the first time he’d walked with Zai, only it wasn’t raining, it wasn’t dark, and he was wearing a pair of well made leather shoes which actually fit. Zai took his hand as they descended the slope which lead from the house, and Tobias allowed himself to look around the vista of the Inner Circle. There were colours he’d not noticed before, little plants with dark foliage growing in cracks between stones and boulders, creepers clinging, impossibly, to the banks of rivers made of molten fire, and skittering beetles with iridescent shells which clicked their carapaces and vanished into tiny shadows as they walked by. A slender green and black scaled snake sat coiled on lump of smooth basalt the size of the brewers wagon, and raised it’s head to watch them as Tobias walked past.

“Servants of Sathriel. Everyone has been very curious about you.” Zai sniggered as he gestured to a group of half a dozen demons, each different in build and appearance, who stood in a cluster at the next intersection of pathways. “Demons are the worst gossips!”

“Good day, sir.”

A woman wearing a long, heavy embroidered robe, and a huge man with red skin and long fangs bowed to them as they passed, then quickly returned to their hushed conversation with a man with practically white scales and narrow eyes. Tobias couldn’t hear what they said, and Zai’s pride was a much more interesting an emotion than their curiosity.

“Am I the only human in Hell?” he asked eventually.

“Yes. And the first in many decades to stay. People don’t bring their playthings and prey in through the West Portal after all.” Zai gestured across the circle to where the great door stood like a cut-out in the fabric of reality, and Tobias craned to look at where their house stood, now seemingly tiny, on the hill. “You see why our house has the best view?”

“I didn’t think we’d been walking that long...”

“Distance is fluctual,” Zai said cryptically. “It’s a long explanation, it can wait for another time. Come, let’s go be announced.”

Up close, the Palace was even more confusing than it had been each time Tobias had stood on the roof and tried to look at it. There were architectural features he didn’t know the names of, and many that seemed to defy the laws of gravity. There was a tower which ended in an onion shaped dome so twisted it didn’t look like it would survive a stiff breeze, and walkways which spanned enormous distances from one part of the building to another, each narrow as a ribbon. Unlike Zinkara Rumah’s simpleness, the Palace looked exactly like it had been pieced together out of bits of whatever had taken Nassau’s fancy at the time.

The Prince’s chuckle in his mind was neither unwelcome nor totally unexpected.

_Sweet you of Tobias, but I didn’t build the whole thing myself. Come, Horace will show you in._

Horace was a fish, wearing something Zai told him was a waistcoat and galoshes, and he waited for them at a doorway which was many times taller than Tobias, but only wide enough to admit one of them at a time.

“There are other doors,” Zai assured him as they stepped into the sudden darkness. _Don’t let go. I’m not losing you._

Tobias gripped Zai’s fingers tightly as they were lead out into a wide hallway, brightly lit with a soft white light, the floor beneath their feet tiled in majestic colours and patterns the likes of which Tobias had never seen before.

“The Prince is in the Arena, he is expecting you.”

“Thank you Horace.” Zai inclined his head politely, and they followed the wet slap of the fish who walked them through the Palace.

Tobias lost count of the rooms they passed, or long galleries they walked through, or stairs they climbed, and it was a relief when Horace stopped at a sleek pale stone door without stepping through, and bowed to them.

“A pleasure to see you in the Palace sirs. Good day.”

Tobias didn’t quite know what he was expecting, but he pushed the door open to reveal an amphitheatre of enormous size, tiered seating where more than a thousand souls could happily sit, occupied by only a few dozen. On the floor of the sandy arena, a black minotaur with white stripes painted across his fur did battle with what appeared to be a giant cockerel with a flaming tail and swords for spurs. Tobias gaped.

_Shut your mouth, or you’ll catch flies._

The young man span around to find Nassau in the near deserted stands, and pinned him with a glare.

_Sorry. It seemed like such an appropriate phrase. You were clearly raised by good people. Come, join me._

Tobias kept a hold of his mate as they worked their way along the curving stands to where Nassau sat, shirtless in nothing but a heavily pleated kilt lined with cloth of gold, talking off handedly with a thick-set man dressed entirely in hard boiled leather. He would have looked human, except that his skin was bright green like new grass, and his hair was scarlet.

“He’s put in the hours in training, and his form is coming along well. I’m hoping he’ll do well at The Games this year.”

“Well, Kage certainly does know how to pick a winner.” Nassau replied.

“Hmmmm,” the green man frowned. “I just wish he wouldn’t eat them afterwards. Hello Zai, not seen your face here in forever.”

Zai smiled broadly.

“You fancy testing those quick wits of yours in the ring?”

_Come_, Nassau stood, bowed slightly to his friend, and gestured to Tobias. _They have much catching up to do, and we should talk._

Tobias wasn’t sure about leaving Zai, he’d never been anywhere in Hell without the demon by his side, but Zai emanated a content happiness, flashing with bravado and a desire to show off, and Tobias dropped his hand.

“Hang on.” Zai caught his lover, pulled him firmly into his arms, and kissed him soundly. Tobias felt his spine melting under the onslaught, and by the time Zai broke the kiss, he was panting. “OK. Now I’m good.”

_I shall miss you until you return, my Sweetling._

Tobias wanted to say something flippant and off-hand, but he could only smile, brush Zai’s chest fur with a lingering hand, and follow the Prince of Hell down the last few tiers of stands and out through a little door set into an otherwise unremarkable wall. It was pitch black for a moment, then there was the distinct sensation of movement, and just as Tobias began to get really worried, Nassau opened a second doorway and Tobias stepped out into bright sunlight.

He stared, then stared some more, than turned to look at Nassau’s soft smile.

“Welcome to the garden. I built it right after the war. Do you like it?”

“It’s… amazing. Are those real trees?”

“Yes.”

Tobias gazed at the blue sky, streaked with occasional clouds near the horizon, the soft natural warmth of the sun on his skin, the breeze with ruffled the pink and white blossom laden branches of the trees. The grass was soft when he bent to touch it, and as he dug his fingers into the soil he found it rich, dark, and loamy, and full of fat pink worms.

“But… how?” _This is impossible._

_You’re in Hell talking to a Prince_, he reminded himself. _Impossible is a very flexible word._

“I am the second most powerful creature in this entire dimension,” Nassau laughed happily as he spoke, “but even I’ll admit it was a lot of work. The garden is special, private. No one can come here without my express permission. Use your mind Tobias, why is the garden special?”

The young man frowned, but Nassau’s easy smile made him curious, and for the first time since Kiorl had threatened to kill him, he let himself fully relax.

And he couldn’t find Zai.

He could feel Nassau, sense his deep calm, he could feel the birds – their fast lives too quick for him to access in any detail – in the branches of a nearby tree, but he had no sense of the demon he slept beside. Tobias stretched further, searching, but there was nothing. Nothing outside of the garden. He turned back to the door they had come through, finding the outline etched into the bark of an enormous tree, and wanted to scream.

_Calm_. Nassau single command was powerful and strong, but also cool and serene. Tobias stilled his panic instantly, and looked at the Prince. _The world is still there, as is the man you love. Here in the garden, the sky above us shields us from the minds of others, and shields us from them._ Nassau stroked the nearest tree with a sad smile. _After Mattias died, I began to spend a lot of time here. It was the only way Zai ever managed to get any rest at all, poor thing. My grief nearly consumed him._

“What happened with Kiorl mustn’t happen too often. Partly, you can learn to control your responses – you’ve been doing that all your life anyway I expect – or your world would have burnt you as a witch.” Nassau rolled his eyes and began to walk, Tobias followed him quickly, and fell into pace beside the Prince. “All the versions of Earth I’ve ever visited have a very… zealous, relationship to magic and religion. It’s a shame really. But they also produce the most interesting people too. I brought you here to teach you how to control your empathic skills a little better. That way you won't have to stumble upon the image of Kiorl fucking my father quite so unexpectedly.”

Tobias blanched at the memory.

_Really, I could have gone my whole life without seeing that._

_Indeed._ Nassau arched a perfect eyebrow at him, and the lines of fire which marked his skin glowed briefly. “Shall we begin?”

Tobias tried to examine Nassau’s emotions, just as he’d been asked, but it was like trying to penetrate a sheet of ice the size of a cathedral. Every time he thought he felt something distinct, it slipped away, and Tobias was left feeling frustrated.

_You turn it inwards,_ Nassau told him silently, his tone so light as though the mental exertion was nothing. _All those grasping vines twist to become an armour to protect yourself. It will take time, and practice. Now, keep me out._

Nassau brushed against his mind, and because the Prince was kind, friendly, and because Tobias felt safe with him, he reached out automatically towards the contact. The slap was a shock, and tears sprang up in his eyes.

“Ow...”

“I am sorry. Resist. You must try.”

Tobias inhaled deeply, the scent of the trees and the grass reminding him of the place he had once called home. He’d spent his whole life protecting himself, and it had been a relief to feel safe within the circle of Zai’s arms. But he couldn’t live in their room forever, and he couldn’t have what happened with Kiorl occur with another powerful demon who might not respond so well to Nassau’s interruption. Nassau reached out to him again, and Tobias glared at him, and pushed.

There was no physical movement, but the sensation vanished, and Nassau’s smile broadened considerably.

_Not looking will get easier, I promise. And you have better self control than Sitka does. _Nassau sniggered silently. _I always liked that boy, it’ll be interesting to see what his future holds if you don’t kill him for his unbridled lasciviousness first!_

“I did OK?”

“It will take more work, but it’s a great start. Come, let us sit and eat apples in the orchard.”

There was a lemon-yellow python curled up under the apple tree, and it raised its fat wedge-shaped head and hissed lazily at them before unrolling itself, and slithering off, brushing against Nassau’s leg as it did so.

“Nice to see you too Ba’al!” Nassau called mockingly after the serpent.

Nassau arranged himself on the grass as though relaxing after a fine summer’s picnic, his immense wings spread out over the short grass, fine slim fingers combing over the plants, plucking and twisting a little blue petalled daisy with a smile. Apart from the fire on his skin, it was easy to forget that he was a demon. He stuck the flower behind his ear, and his yard long hair twisted itself up into a bun behind his head. Tobias sat carefully opposite him, and yelped in sudden surprise as two shiny red apples fell directly into his lap. He handed one to Nassau with a silent question.

“I dabble a bit in magic.”

“But that’s not what you want to talk about?” Tobias bit into his apple. It was perfect.

_Why don’t you ask the question which has been bothering you Tobias?_

“You said you could help me, so that I could feel Zai’s love. Will you?”

“Yes. But it is not simple.”

Tobias nodded firmly.

“I love him. I don’t want to be without him, but I’m not his pet.” _I swear if Kiorl calls me that again I’m going to shave his hair in his sleep._

“Now, now… please don’t make me choose between you and my oldest friend. He would look silly with no hair. Tell me Tobias, do you think of the future?”

_I always wondered if I’d grow up to look like my father._

_And what if you never aged another day?_

“What?” Tobias stared at the Prince of Hell as his mind grappled with the statement. “What do you mean?”

“Demon’s don’t age, at least, not past the stage when they reach maturity. Zai will never age, he will be the way he is forever. But you are ageing as you sit here. You are very young, you do not notice it, but in another decade? Or thirty years? Or sixty? Will you be happy to age whilst everyone else you know remains the same?”

“But...”_ Zai can heal me._

“My dear friend, Zai can do many things, but even he cannot stop the wheel of time. You will, one day, die.”

“I couldn’t do that to him!”

Nassau nearly glowed with pleasure.

“Then you will join us, become a demon? An immortal? In return, I can give you the ability to sense love, just as you ought to.”

“Yes.”

The Prince’s smile broke into a broad grin, and he bit his apple.

_I always hoped he would be happy, oh long lost brother._

“Brother?!”

“Damn, I can see why Kiorl was blind-sided by you. You’re so smooth. Such power is very rare among humans.”

Tobias swiped the apple from the lounging demon.

“Don’t change the subject. What did you mean, that Zai is your brother?”

Nassau thought hard for a minute, and when Tobias tried to read him all he could sense was the Prince’s uncertainty, and the distinct feeling that there was a secret not often shared, waiting just out of reach.

_What did Zai tell you about how he spends his time Upstairs?_

Willingly, Tobias played for the Prince the visions Zai had given him, of being a small, powerless, feline, alone and lonely, and waiting for the moon to change.

_But I don’t know why. Is it like that for all demons?_

_No._ “You remember when I told you that Hell wasn’t always as you see it now?”

Tobias nodded.

“Well, there was a time even earlier than that. Before I was made, my Father had another family. He wanted companionship and heirs, and so he split his power – unwisely as it turned out – between thirteen children. Each different, each gifted. And Zai was one.

“Demon teenagers are just as bad as human ones, or worse depending whom you ask, and are not content to live forever purposeless in their Father’s shadow. They got together one night on their favourite Earth, and hatched a plan to overthrow him.”

_Some people call this the First Rebellion._

Tobias nodded as the words snagged at the feeling of importance which had lingered ever since he’d first heard the words.

_There was a second one? _He asked with mounting worry.

_Yes. But that’s a story for another time._

“Father found out, of course. He gathered up and killed the ringleaders, and cursed the rest.”

Tobias had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as he realised where the story was going, and blinked when he realised the trepidation was Nassau’s, flavoured with his stormy smokiness.

“He left them on that Earth, stripped of their powers and tied to the moon. They each had three days in their true shape, and the rest of time they were damned to live as animals with no way to come home.”

“What happened to them?” Tobias tried not to imagine Zai as a simple animal, alone and small and scared, but he did anyway.

“I do not know the specifics. This was before I was made, and then whilst I was a child in Hell. I know some died, hunted down by predators whilst powerless, mourned by no one. Some found their other siblings, and waited it out until the moon blessed them with their power. Then they fought and killed each other, absorbing the power of the others. I know from Zai’s memory he killed at least three of his siblings. Eventually, there was only Zai left.

“Things in Hell had changed by then. I and my two brothers were grown, and things were something like they are now. Kiorl was already living in Zinkara Rumah. And it was Kiorl who found him Upstairs. Alone, practically feral, covered in blood, and living in some godsforsaken hovel, his memory ruined by so many years living as an animal. Kiorl brought him home. He’s not as heartless as you think.”

The image of Kiorl, his hair longer, his clothes different, stumbling through the West Portal with a skinny, bloody, matted furred version of Zai slumped over his shoulders, sprang into Tobias’s mind.

“Does… Does Zai know all this?”

“I don’t think so, though I don’t truly know. Most of what I’ve told you, I learnt from studying the murals and mosaics in the Palace. Some people know about the rebellion, but not about what happened afterwards. We identified Zai by a relief carving of him when all thirteen heirs had lived in Hell. All he remembered was his own name, and that he’d killed the only other demons he’d ever met.

“He is, in a very real way, my brother, though he seems not to be aware of it. He is older than me, the only living demon to be so, apart from Father.”

“Don’t you have other brothers?” Tobias questioned, though he already knew the answer.

“Not any more.” Nassau took a deep, cleansing breath, and Tobias knew suddenly that the Prince had never gotten to say all this out loud to anyone else ever before. “It’s why we’re both empaths, he and I. Father tied parts of himself to each of his children. In Zai he put what he loved and hated most – his desire for violence, and his need for company. When we brought Zai home, Father didn’t appear to remember him and didn’t realise he was an empath.

“Kiorl thought that best, so we kept him out of the Royal Court, settled him at Zinkara Rumah, and gave him a job. And now, he has you. I have always wanted him to be happy.”

“What happens if I tell Zai all of this?”

_What good would it do? He cannot be Prince, he is not strong enough to kill me, nor would he want to. And I certainly don’t want to hurt him. And Father… _Nassau shuddered visibly.

“My Father is known for holding grudges. He could kill him, Kiorl too for covering up the truth, though he’d have more problem disposing of me. Two thousand years of peace and stability would be undone in a heartbeat.” Nassau stood, every moment incredibly graceful, and Tobias scrambled too his feet beside him. “But you deserve to know who you’re choosing to spend forever with. So, Tobias, what do you wish for?”

The Prince plucked one long, bronze feather from his wing and held it out with a soft smile. Tobias smiled back, because they both already knew the answer.

_You know how to use it?_

Tobias thought of the image he’d seen in Zai’s memory, the only time he’d ever seen the Prince of Hell truly happy, and nodded.

_Yes._

_Wait for a quiet time, and hold everything you want in your mind when you do it._

They had reached the door etched into the tree, and Nassau opened it with one hand as easily as if it had been any other normal egress.

“Oh, and Tobias?”

“Yes, Nassau?”

“Nice suit.”

Tobias arrived back in the Arena in time to see Zai’s opponent step back and raise whatever it was that passed for it’s hands in defeat, then spit black blood on the floor. Tobias tucked the feather into the breast pocket of his suit, and smiled down at his lover.

_I missed you._

_I know._

_I’m gonna do horrible things to you later. _Zai grinned lewdly over the stands.

Tobias blew a kiss to his lover. He thought of standing in the huge kitchen of the house he called his home, imagining whisking sugar into egg whites to make a batch of Forgotten Cookies he’d actually get to eat, and smiled.

_But first, dinner._


End file.
